Hectares,  S>ebentt)  feertcs 
JDelibereb  at  Be^auto 


Social  Rebuilders 


CHARLES  REYNOLDS  JBROWN 

Dean  of  Divinity  School,  Tale  University 


"And  they  said,  Let  us  rise  up  and  build' 


THE  ABINGDON  PRESS 

NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1921,  by 
CHARLES  REYNOLDS  BROWN 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


TO 

MARCUS  D.  BTJELL 

TEACHER  AND  FRIEND 
WHO  TAUGHT  ME  TO  READ  THE  GOSPELS 

WITH  A  TRUER  INSIGHT 

AND  TO  FOLLOW  THE  ONE  THERE  PORTRAYED 
WITH  A  MORE  COMPLETE  FIDELITY 

I  DEDICATE  THIS  BOOK 
IN  GRATITUDE  AND  AFFECTION 


CONTENTS 

CBAPTEB  PAGF. 

FOREWORD 7 

I.  THE   LABOR   LEADER   WHO   FREED   THE 

SLAVES 9 

II.  THE  PROPHET  WHO  FOUGHT  A  WICKED 

KING 43 

III.  THE  HERDSMAN  WHO  PREACHED  SOCIAL 

JUSTICE 78 

IV.  THE  MAN  WHO  EXALTED  RIGHTEOUSNESS 

ABOVE  RITUAL 112 

V.  THE  LEADER  IN  A  DAY  OF  SOCIAL  RE- 
BUILDING. .  .   147 


FOREWORD 

THE  chief  distinction  of  this  little  book  is 
that  it  is  a  voice  crying  in  the  present  wilder- 
ness of  confusion  and  disorder  showing  the 
way  out.  The  author  is  a  modern  prophet 
with  a  message  of  God  for  the  time.  He 
gives  in  these  lectures  a  discriminating 
appraisal  of  present-day  industrial  and  social 
conditions.  He  interprets  the  message  of  the 
old  Hebrew  seers  with  rare  spiritual  insight 
and  proclaims  their  religion  as  the  only  hope 
for  the  rebuilding  of  the  world.  Coming 
from  the  ranks  of  the  toiling  masses,  Dean 
Brown  speaks  not  as  a  partisan  but  with  a 
broad  sympathy.  For  the  reconstruction  of 
the  world  he  looks  not  to  institutions  but  to 
ideals;  not  to  new  measures  but  to  higher 
motives.  This  volume  breathes  with  passion- 
ate eloquence  for  the  humanizing  of  industry, 
for  the  moralizing  of  social  relations,  and  for 
Christianizing  the  whole  of  life.  For  stimu- 
lating thinking,  and  prophetic  utterance  upon 
the  vital  issues  of  the  time,  these  lectures  will 
be  highly  prized  both  by  ministers  and  lay- 
men. 

The  Mendenhall  Lectures  of  DePauw  Uni- 
versity, to  which  this  series  of  addresses  be- 
longs, was  founded  by  the  Rev.  Mannaduke 
H.  Mendenhall,  D.D.,  of  the  North  Indiana 

7 


8  FOREWORD 

Conference  of  the  Methodist  Episcopal 
Church.  The  object  of  the  donor  was  "to 
found  a  perpetual  lectureship  on  the  evi- 
dences of  the  divine  origin  of  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures. The  lecturers  must  be  persons  of  wide 
repute,  of  broad  and  varied  scholarship,  who 
firmly  adhere  to  the  evangelical  system  of 
Christian  faith.  The  selection  of  lecturers 
may  be  made  from  the  world  of  Christian 
scholarship,  without  regard  to  denomina- 
tional divisions.  Each  course  of  lectures  is  to 
be  published  in  book  form  by  an  eminent  pub- 
lishing house  and  sold  at  cost  to  the  faculty 
and  students  of  the  University." 
Lectures  previously  published: 

1913,  The   Bible   and   Life,   Edwin   Holt 
Hughes. 

1914,  The  Literary  Primacy  of  the  Bible, 
George  Peck  Eckman. 

1917,  Understanding  the  Scriptures,  Fran- 
cis John  McConnell. 

1918,  Religion  and  War,  William  Herbert 
Perry  Faunce. 

1919,  Some  Aspects  of  International  Chris- 
tianity, John  Kelman. 

1920,  What  Must  the  Church  Do  To  Be 
Saved?  Ernest  Fremont  Tittle. 

GEORGE  R.  GROSE, 
President  DePauw  University. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE    LABOR    LEADER    WHO    FREED 
THE  SLAVES 

THE  Master  never  prayed  that  his  follow- 
ers should  be  taken  out  of  the  world  into 
some  heaven  of  detachment  from  its  sin  and 
pain.  He  prayed,  rather,  that  they  should  be 
kept  from  the  evil  of  the  world  and  be  stead- 
ily engaged  in  a  sturdy  effort  to  overcome 
that  evil  with  good.  He  put  upon  our  lips 
those  words  which  impel  us  to  look  up  into 
the  face  of  Infinite  Perfection  and  say, ' l  Thy 
kingdom  come."  We  are  to  look  for  it  and 
strive  for  it  here  and  now.  "Thy  will  be 
done"  here  on  earth  as  it  is  done  in  heaven! 
The  better  mode  of  life  which  we  crave  is  to 
come  down  out  of  heaven  from  God.  It  is 
to  come  down  out  of  the  realm  of  vision  into 
the  realm  of  accomplished  fact.  And  we  are 
not  to  limit  our  aspiration  nor  to  cease  from 
that  prayer  until  those  high  ends  shall  have 
been  achieved. 

The  two  contrasting  ideas  in  the  matter  of 
personal  excellence  here  suggested  may  bo 
vividly  seen  in  two  types  of  men  with  whose 

9 


10  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

work  we  are  all  familiar.  John  Bright  and 
Cardinal  Newman  lived  in  the  same  century. 
They  were  citizens  of  the  same  country,  and 
for  a  time  their  lives  were  identified  with  the 
same  city.  They  were  both  men  of  marked 
ability;  they  both  came  to  be  national  figures 
and  both  were  earnest  Christians.  But  at  the 
very  time  when  John  Bright  was  fighting 
for  the  repeal  of  the  wicked  Corn  Laws  and 
striving  to  better  the  social  conditions  in  his 
own  country  and  laboring  for  the  promotion 
of  international  peace  throughout  the  world, 
Cardinal  Newman  was  writing  those  pathetic 
words  which  were  recorded  in  his  biography 
by  Wilfrid  Ward:  "The  simple  question  is, 
Can  I  be  saved  in  the  Church  of  England? 
Would  I  be  in  safety  were  I  to  die  to-night?" 
He  decided  that  he  would  not  be  "in  safety," 
so  he  entered  the  Roman  Church. 

It  is  significant,  by  the  way,  that  the  man 
who  was  striving  mainly  to  save  his  own 
soul  by  the  prudent  cultivation  of  a  personal 
and  private  piety  looked  finally  for  his  guid- 
ance to  the  external  authority  of  an  ecclesias- 
tical organization.  The  man  who  was  los- 
ing his  life  in  seeking  the  high  ends  of  social 
justice  looked  for  his  guidance  to  that 
"Inner  Light"  which  is  shed  directly  by  the 
Divine  Presence  in  the  hearts  of  all  those 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS  11 

who  have  the  will  to  do  his  will.  In  the  judg- 
ment of  the  one  who  makes  to  us  the  stronger 
appeal,  the  main  office  of  religion  is  not  to 
enable  a  man  to  make  a  safe  retreat  into  the 
security  of  paradise.  The  main  office  of  re- 
ligion is  the  restoration,  the  exaltation,  and 
the  enrichment  of  everyday  life  in  this  pres- 
ent world. 

"The  true  mark  of  a  saved  man,"  someone 
has  said,  "is  not  that  he  wants  to  go  to 
heaven  but  that  he  is  willing  to  go  to  China, 
or  to  the  battlefields  of  France,  or  to  the 
slums  of  some  great  city,  or  to  the  last  dollar 
of  his  resources,  or  to  the  limit  of  his  energy, 
in  order  to  set  forward  the  kingdom  of  God 
on  earth."  The  old,  selfish,  luxurious  idea 
that  a  man's  chief  concern  is  to  save  his  own 
soul  and  thus  gain  by  his  prudent  piety  a 
heaven  of  bliss,  scarcely  gets  a  rise  out  of  the 
troubled  sea  of  modern  life. 

The  Master  of  our  Christian  faith  made  all 
this  plain,  and  his  forerunners,  the  prophets 
of  Israel,  lived  in  the  same  high,  heroic  mood. 
They  had  very  little  to  say  about  * '  the  sweet 
by  and  by."  They  gave  scant  attention  to 
the  hope  of  a  blessed  immortality  awaiting  us 
in  some  unseen  world.  They  did  not  pray  for 
"the  wings  of  the  dove"  that  they  "might 
fly  away  and  be  at  rest."  They  prayed, 


12  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

rather,  for  the  baptism  of  that  Spirit  which 
is  symbolized  by  the  dove  in  the  life  of  our 
Lord  to  the  end  that  here,  in  this  present 
order  where  we  find  ourselves,  they  too  might 
do  always  those  things  that  pleased  the 
Father.  They  were  to  gain  their  peace  not 
by  flight  but  by  conquest.  They  were  intent 
upon  having  the  divine  will  stand  fast  and 
bear  rule  in  the  social  and  the  domestic,  in 
the  industrial  and  the  political  life  of  the 
race.  They  were  the  heralds  of  a  kingdom 
whose  leading  notes  were  to  be  righteousness, 
peace,  and  joy  in  the  Divine  Spirit. 

The  first  book  in  the  Bible  deals  entirely 
with  individuals.  The  first  question  asked  in 
it  has  to  do  with  the  personal  standing  of  an 
individual  before  God.  ''Adam,  where  art 
thou?"  the  Lord  said.  And  the  whole  book 
is  made  up  of  interesting  stories  about  indi- 
viduals— Adam  and  Eve,  Cain  and  Abel, 
Noah,  Abraham,  Isaac,  Jacob,  and  Joseph. 
These  individuals  (with  the  possible  excep- 
tion of  Joseph  during  his  stay  in  Egypt)  are 
portrayed  as  standing  quite  apart  from  the 
organized  life  of  industry  and  civics. 

But  the  moment  you  turn  the  leaf  and  open 
the  second  book  in  the  Bible  you  enter  upon 
the  history  of  a  race.  The  book  of  Exodus 
from  start  to  finish  is  a  social  document — it 


SOCIAL   BEBUILDERS  13 

might  well  be  called  ' '  the  Story  of  an  Ancient 
Labor  Movement."  It  shows  us  how  a  race 
of  slaves  was  delivered  from  bondage.  It 
outlines  the  growth  of  race  consciousness ;  it 
portrays  the  laws  and  the  institutions,  the 
social  manners  and  customs  which  entered 
into  the  shaping  of  a  nation's  life.  In  this 
first  lecture,  then,  on^the  work  of  these  lead- 
ers in  social  rebuilding  I  wish  to  speak  of 
the  chief  figure  in  that  interesting  book.  Let 
me  ask  you  to  look  at  Moses,  the  labor  leader 
who  freed  the  slaves. 

You  all  know  the  story  of  those  Hebrews 
who  went  down  to  Egypt  for  food  because 
there  was  a  famine  in  their  own  land  of 
Canaan.  They  remained  there  in  the  fat  Nile 
Delta  for  many  years  quite  contented  with 
their  lot.  But  at  a  later  period  "  there  arose 
a  king  who  knew  not  Joseph."  The  gifted 
Hebrew,  who  had  nobly  served  the  interests 
of  Egypt  and  had  secured  a  better  status  for 
his  fellow  countrymen,  had  long  since  gone 
to  his  reward,  and  his  influence  had  faded  out. 
This  later  Pharaoh  oppressed  and  enslaved 
the  helpless  Hebrews  until  "their  lives  were 
made  bitter  with  hard  bondage.*' 

He  set  task  masters  over  them,  so  that ' '  all 
their  service  was  with  rigor."  Their  physi- 
cal strength  was  being  depleted  by  hard, 


14  SOCIAL   KEBUILDEES 

monotonous  toil.  But,  worse  than  that,  their 
manhood  and  womanhood  were  being  de- 
stroyed by  that  ruthless  system  of  industry. 
They  lost  all  zest  and  relish  in  life  and  their 
whole  capacity  for  spiritual  response  was 
fast  going.  "They  hearkened  not  to  the  spirit 
of  God  for  anguish  of  soul."  It  was  the 
tragedy  wrought  by  an  economic  system 
which  brought  defeat  to  all  their  better  quali- 
ties of  mind  and  heart.  And  when  their  for- 
tunes had  reached  this  low  ebb  Moses,  the 
man  of  the  hour,  came  upon  the  scene. 

Let  me  notice  three  things  about  him. 
First,  he  was  a  man  of  the  people.  His 
parents  were  slaves.  His  father  and  mother 
had  known  the  bitterness  and  the  defeat  of 
that  hard  bondage.  They  showed  the  service 
stripes  of  economic  slavery  upon  their  faces 
and  upon  their  hearts.  Moses  had  seen  in  his 
own  home  the  coarse  fare  and  the  rude  con- 
ditions of  those  who  failed  to  secure  an  equi- 
table share  of  the  good  things  they  helped 
to  create. 

His  own  escape  from  it  for  a  time,  through 
the  generous  action  of  the  princess,  did  not 
blind  him  to  the  injustice  of  it  all.  He  was  a 
Hebrew  of  the  Hebrews,  and  his  heart  beat 
true  to  his  own  class.  When  he  was  grown  to 
man's  estate  his  first  recorded  act  was  one  of 


15 

courageous  participation  in  the  ill  fortunes  of 
his  race.  ' '  He  refused  to  be  called  the  son  of 
Pharaoh's  daughter,"  who  had  taken  him 
under  her  care,  choosing  rather  to  suffer 
affliction  with  his  own  people  than  to  enjoy 
the  pleasures  of  an  iniquitous  system  for  a 
season. 

In  like  manner,  present  indications  point  to 
the  fact  that  the  men  who  are  to  lead  to-day 
in  the  securing  of  a  better  type  of  industrial 
life  must  come  mainly  from  the  ranks.  The 
men  who  have  shared  in  the  rough  work  of 
the  world  have  the  first  right  to  the  floor,  and 
it  is  altogether  fitting  that  they  should  be 
heard.  We  wonder  sometimes  why  wise  pro- 
fessors of  economics,  sitting  comfortably 
apart  in  well-endowed  university  chairs,  or 
canny  millionaires  who  have  made  their  piles, 
or  facile  writers  of  clever  articles  on  social 
questions  to  be  published  in  the  "uplift  maga- 
zines," may  not  be  permitted  to  tell  these 
wage-earners  what  to  do  and  how  to  do  it  in 
order  to  save  them  from  the  painful  blunders 
they  often  make  in  learning  the  way.  But  the 
plain  people  will  not  follow  those  leaders 
blindly,  and  they  ought  not.  It  belongs  to 
their  advance  that  they  should  develop  their 
own  leaders.  The  men  who  are  to  take  the 
right  of  the  line  in  the  forward  movement  of 


16  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

the  common  people  must  be  bone  of  their 
bone  and  flesh  of  their  flesh.  The  fitness  for 
that  larger  measure  of  freedom  and  of  pros- 
perity which  they  crave  with  all  its  added  re- 
sponsibilities must  come  through  the  very 
process  of  developing  their  own  leadership 
and  of  acquiring  their  own  power  of  initia- 
tive. 

It  is  also  significant  that  the  social  leaders 
who  have  come  from  the  more  fortunate 
classes  have  not,  as  a  rule,  proved  themselves 
altogether  trustworthy  as  guides.  It  was 
William  Ewart  Gladstone,  a  man  of  wealth 
and  of  university  training  himself,  who  main- 
tained that ' '  In  almost  every  one  of  the  great 
political  controversies  of  the  last  fifty  years, 
whether  they  affected  the  franchise  or  com- 
merce or  religion,  the  leisure  class,  the  titled 
class,  and  the  educated  class  have  been  in  the 
wrong."  Gladstone  was  no  foe  of  wealth. 
He  suffered  from  no  unjust  prejudice  as  to 
the  value  of  education.  He  was  himself  born 
in  a  castle  and  was  a  graduate  of  Christ 
Church  College  in  Oxford  University,  but  he 
saw  the  perils  of  privilege  and  the  moral 
blindness  which  sometimes  befalls  the  chil- 
dren of  good  fortune. 

The  large-minded  employers  of  labor — and 
there  are  many  of  them  in  these  days  and  the 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES  17 

number  is  constantly  increasing — are  frankly 
facing  the  fact  that  the  number  of  things 
which  they  can  do  for  the  men  and  women  in 
their  employ  is  limited.  The  wage-earners 
keenly  resent  every  kind  of  paternalism. 
They  resent  the  idea  of  having  "welfare 
work"  and  "uplift  schemes"  imposed  upon 
them.  They  are  not  little  children  to  be  given 
their  bread  and  milk  and  tucked  into  bed  at 
the  proper  time,  with  a  kiss  and  a  prayer  and 
a  fond  good  night.  They  too  are  responsible 
members  of  society.  They  are  not  just 
"hands"  in  the  mill.  They  have  heads  on 
their  shoulders  and  hearts  in  their  breasts 
like  the  rest  of  us.  They  insist  on  being  "con- 
sulted" and  "shown."  And  the  wise  em- 
ployers are  not  working  for  their  employees ; 
they  are  working  with  them.  They  are  en- 
couraging the  spirit  of  initiative  and  the 
making  of  plans  and  the  development  of  lead- 
ership among  the  working  people  themselves. 
When  the  Triangle  Shirt  Waist  Factory  in 
the  city  of  New  York  was  burned  a  few  years 
ago  and  a  hundred  and  forty-three  working 
girls  with  it,  the  citizens  arranged  a  mass 
meeting  of  protest  for  the  following  Sunday 
afternoon.  It  was  held  in  the  Metropolitan 
Opera  House,  and  the  place  was  packed, 
orchestra,  boxes,  galleries  and  all.  The  late 


18  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

Bishop  Greer,  representing  the  Episcopal 
Church,  addressed  the  meeting,  voicing  the 
Christian  sentiment  touching  that  horror. 
Rabbi  Wise  spoke  for  the  Hebrews  and  Mr. 
Jacob  H.  Schiff,  capitalist  and  philanthropist, 
spoke  for  the  people  of  good  fortune  and 
social  position.  Many  wise  and  kind  words 
were  uttered  by  these  gentlemen. 

When  they  had  finished,  the  chairman  intro- 
duced Miss  Rose  Schneiderman,  the  head  of 
the  Shirt  Waist  Makers'  Union.  She  walked 
out  to  the  front  of  the  stage,  paused  a  moment 
to  get  control  of  her  voice,  and  then  said  this 
— her  words  were  burned  into  my  memory  as 
with  a  hot  iron.  "This  is  not  the  first  time 
that  working  girls  have  been  burned  to  death 
in  the  city  of  New  York  because  employers 
were  breaking  the  law.  Each  week  on  an 
average  comes  the  untimely  death  of  at  least 
one  of  my  fellow  workers,  and  every  year 
hundreds  of  us  are  maimed  by  dangerous,  un- 
protected machinery.  The  lives  of  women 
are  cheap  and  property  is  sacred.  There  are 
so  many  of  us  what  does  it  matter  if  a  hun- 
dred and  forty-three  are  burned  alive?  I 
would  be  a  traitor  to  these  poor  burned  bodies 
if  I  stood  here  and  simply  talked  good  fellow- 
ship. We  have  tried  you  good  people  and  we 
have  found  you  wanting.  You  are  always 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES  19 

ready  to  give  a  couple  of  dollars  apiece  all 
around  for  the  sorrowing  families,  but  when 
we  come  out  in  the  only  way  we  know  to  op- 
pose conditions  which  have  become  unbear- 
able, the  strong  hand  of  the  law  is  down  upon 
us  instantly.  I  stand  here  to  protest  against 
the  injustice  of  it  all. '  * 

The  audience  listened  to  that  vital  thrust 
which  was  in  striking  contrast  to  some  of  the 
pallid,  placid  things  which  had  been  said  by 
the  preceding  speakers.  It  listened  and  re- 
flected and  drew  a  long  breath.  Then  the  peo- 
ple rose  to  their  feet  and  shouted  their  ap- 
proval as  no  Metropolitan  Opera  House  audi- 
ence had  ever  shouted  its  satisfaction  in  the 
triumph  of  some  singer  like  Melba  or  Caruso. 
The  note  of  social  justice  had  been  struck  by 
one  of  the  working  people  and  the  American 
conscience  responded  with  a  loud  "Amen." 
Pity,  compassion,  kindliness — they  are  all 
good,  but  there  is  a  demand  for  something 
more  fundamental!  And  when  that  deeper 
note  of  justice  sounded  forth  from  the  lips  of 
a  worker  the  people  were  ready  with  their  ap- 
proval. 

The  words  of  that  woman  spoken  on  behalf 
of  all  the  toiling  people  who  have  suffered 
hurt  and  loss  by  unfair  deals  constitute  a 
challenge  to  the  moral  forces  of  our  nation. 


20  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

It  is  a  challenge  which  must  be  met.  It  can- 
not be  met  by  a  few  gracefully  worded  reso- 
lutions about  "the  dignity  of  labor"  or  by 
occasional  outbursts  of  generous  feeling.  It 
must  be  met  by  patient,  resolute,  far-seeing 
action,  which  looks  toward  a  larger  measure 
of  social  justice.  The  religious  people  of  the 
land  cannot  sing  nor  can  they  pray  aright 
unless  at  the  same  time  they  are  setting  them- 
selves man-fashion  to  meet  that  challenge. 
The  music  of  the  anthem  and  the  words  of 
the  liturgy  will  stick  in  their  throats  like 
Macbeth 's  "Amen"  unless  they  frankly  ac- 
cept that  protest  from  the  world  of  toil  and 
show  themselves  intent  upon  the  correction 
of  the  injustices  of  industrial  life. 

The  policy  of  repression  at  this  point  is 
altogether  mistaken  and  dangerous.  "Do  we 
want  labor  more  disaffected  than  it  is  now? 
It  is  easy  to  make  it  so.  Do  we  want  more 
revolutionary  leaders?  They  can  be  had  for 
the  asking.  So  far  as  capital  insists  on  de- 
feating collective  bargaining  it  will  close  the 
safety  valve.  To  bargain  with  the  full 
strength  of  a  union  is  the  one  avenue  through 
which  labor  is  to  enter  the  new  partnership. 
It  is  the  avenue  through  which  business  re- 
sponsibilities are  one  by  one  to  be  taken  on 
by  labor.  So  deep  is  the  unrest  that  the  one 


SOCIAL   REBUILDEES  21 

problem  is  to  fix  this  responsibility  on  labor 
groups  at  the  safest  points.  This  will  force 
labor  to  select  the  kind  of  leader  required  for 
those  duties,  as  we  have  long  seen  among  co- 
operators  and  in  the  older  and  steadier 
unions." 

"At  a  gathering  of  business  men  in  Atlan- 
tic City  after  the  war  Mr.  John  D.  Rocke- 
feller, Jr.,  and  Mr.  Charles  M.  Schwab 
warned  their  fellows  in  language  which  ten 
years  ago  would  have  classed  them  as 
poseurs.  'Not  only  must  we  and  our  kind,' 
it  was  said,  'gradually  accept  government 
supervision  to  correct  abuses  inherent  in  com- 
peting industry,  but  labor  itself  is  to  have 
a  new  deal.  It  must  have  constructive  recog- 
nition. It  must  freely  choose  its  representa- 
tives to  work  with  capitalistic  directors."1 

The  fact  is  stated  and  it  is  significant  that 
this  ancient  labor  leader  was  not  a  glib  talker. 
He  tried  to  beg  off  at  first  because  of  his  lack 
of  eloquence.  "I  am  slow  of  speech,"  he  said 
to  the  Lord, '  *  and  of  a  slow  tongue. ' '  He  felt 
that  this  would  disqualify  him.  He  had  not 
learned  that  in  almost  all  of  the  social  move- 
ments of  the  world  the  glib  speakers  have 
come  unduly  to  the  front.  They  have  de- 
claimed to  responsive  audiences  in  a  manner 

i  Labor's  Challenge  to  the  Social  Order.     J.  G.  Brooks.     Pages  22,  414. 


22  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

most  gratifying  to  themselves,  but  oftentimes 
to  the  detriment  of  the  very  causes  they 
espoused.  The  orators,  the  spellbinders,  the 
men  who  talk  loud  and  see  red,  have  again 
and  again  wielded  an  influence  which  was  not 
for  the  permanent  well-being  of  their  awe- 
struck hearers. 

The  men  of  vision  and  insight,  slow  of 
speech  and  slow  of  tongue  though  they  are  in 
many  situations,  working  not  by  burning  ora- 
tions nor  by  fiery  appeals,  but  by  wise,  patient, 
constructive  effort,  are  the  more  significant 
factors  in  the  solution  of  these  problems. 
And  these  men,  less  conspicuous  than  the 
orators  but  much  more  useful,  are  writing 
those  pages  of  social  advance  which  later  gen- 
erations will  read  with  gratitude  and  joy.  It 
is  one  thing  to  talk  in  glowing  terms  about 
the  righting  of  wrongs  and  it  is  quite  another 
and  a  very  much  harder  and  higher  thing  to 
set  in  operation  those  forms  of  effort  which 
look  toward  the  permanent  correction  of 
those  wrongs. 

This  man  of  the  people,  however,  was  not 
an  untrained  ignoramus.  "He  was  learned," 
we  read,  "in  all  the  learning  of  the  Egyp- 
tians." He  shared  actively  in  the  benefits  of 
one  of  the  highest  civilizations  of  that  early 
date.  He  was  no  raw  enthusiast,  devoid  of 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEBS  23 

judgment  and  of  experience.  He  had  given 
years  of  study  and  reflection  to  the  problems 
he  was  now  set  to  solve. 

The  gap  between  theory  and  practice  may 
be  wide — it  often  is — but  it  is  never  so  wide 
as  the  gap  between  ignorance  and  compe- 
tence. We  have  all  seen  good  causes  go  down 
in  defeat  for  the  lack  of  competent,  far-seeing 
leadership.  There  were  facts  enough  in  the 
minds  of  men;  there  was  feeling  enough  in 
the  hearts  of  men;  there  was  energy  enough 
in  the  strong  right  arms  of  men,  but  there 
was  a  lack  of  that  competent  and  worthy 
leadership  which  can  be  gained  only  through 
training  and  experience.  Therefore  their 
contention  failed.  The  hands  on  the  clock  of 
social  betterment  were  put  back  by  those  who 
could  talk  and  feel  but  could  not  wisely  judge. 
Some  one  has  cleverly  said,  "The  idealist 
knows  where  to  go  but  lacks  facilities;  the 
practical  man  gets  there  but  finds  himself  in 
the  wrong  place."  We  must  enlist  the  com- 
bined action  of  both  types  of  men  for  the 
great  advance.  Here  to-day,  as  in  that  far- 
away scene  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile,  there  is 
sore  need  of  the  patient  application  of  eco- 
nomic intelligence  and  of  instructive  expe- 
rience as  well  as  of  social  conscience  and 
moral  enthusiasm  to  problems  too  vast  and 


24  SOCIAL   KEBUILDEBS 

too  intricate  for  any  offhand  impromptu  solu- 
tion. 

During  the  Great  War  many  fine  words 
were  uttered  in  high  places  as  to  the  worth 
and  significance  of  the  workingman.  He  was 
in  the  mines  furnishing  fuel  for  the  winning 
of  the  war.  He  was  in  the  factories  furnish- 
ing munitions  for  the  winning  of  the  war.  He 
was  on  the  farm  furnishing  food  for  the  win- 
ning of  the  war.  He  was  on  the  railroads  and 
in  the  steamships  furnishing  transporta- 
tion for  the  winning  of  the  war.  He  was 
simply  indispensable  in  the  hour  when  the 
fate  of  civilization  seemed  to  tremble  in  the 
balance. 

The  workingman  will  not  soon  forget  all 
those  fine  words.  Never  again  will  he  accept 
willingly  what  was  dealt  out  to  him  in  certain 
sections  of  the  workaday  world  before  the 
war.  The  day  when  he  could  be  told  in  blunt 
fashion  to  "take  it  or  leave  it"  is  gone.  The 
"hire-and-fire"  method  of  dealing  in  cavalier 
fashion  with  working  people  has  been  hope- 
lessly discredited.  The  workingman  is  on 
his  feet  to-day  insisting  on  his  right  to  be 
heard  in  the  determination  of  those  condi- 
tions which  so  intimately  and  powerfully 
affect  his  own  welfare  and  the  welfare  of  his 
family.  And  I  do  not  see  anywhere  in  sight 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS  25 

any  chairman  of  the  meeting  who  will  be  able 
to  make  him  sit  down  and  take  whatever  is 
handed  out  to  him. 

There  will  come  inevitably  a  better  type  of 
labor  leader  from  the  ranks.  The  employing 
class  engaged  in  business  on  its  own  account 
is  not  now  drawing  off  the  stronger  brains 
and  the  more  aspiring  wage-earners  as  it  did 
a  generation  ago.  Then  unoccupied  land  in 
the  West  was  still  drawing  away  the  more 
resolute  spirits  from  the  crowded  centers  of 
industry.  To-day  that  land  has  practically  all 
been  taken  up.  The  amount  of  capital  needed 
to  go  into  business  for  oneself  in  that  day 
was  not  so  large.  To-day  the  huge  depart- 
ment store,  the  corporation,  or  the  trust  en- 
gaged in  manufacture  makes  it  all  but  im- 
possible for  the  wage-earner  to  aspire  to  a 
business  of  his  own.  The  economic  system  is 
not  so  elastic  as  it  was  forty  years  ago.  The 
abler  wage-earners  will  of  necessity  remain 
in  their  own  class  furnishing  material  for 
that  better  type  of  labor  leader. 

The  development  of  that  more  competent 
and  trustworthy  type  of  leadership  has 
already  made  substantial  progress.  It  was 
one  of  our  most  thoughtful,  careful  observers 
of  social  conditions  and  movements,  John 
Graham  Brooks,  who  said  in  a  recent  book: 


26  SOCIAL   KEBUILDERS 

"At  a  sitting  of  the  Commission  on  Industrial 
Relations  I  sat  beside  the  largest  employer 
of  labor  in  his  industry  in  this  country  (Mr. 
Schaffner  of  Hart,  Schaffner  &  Marx),  and 
probably  in  the  world.  He  had  listened  for 
several  days  to  the  testimony  by  employers 
and  by  their  attorneys  and  by  labor  men.  He 
turned  to  me  and  said,  'These  labor  repre- 
sentatives are  really  better  informed  on  the 
subjects  here  treated  and  state  their  case 
better  than  we  do.'  "  The  men  who  voiced 
the  toilers7  point  of  view  knew  what  they 
were  about  and  they  moved  straight  toward 
the  goal  they  had  in  view  with  a  measure  of 
insight  which  won  the  admiration  of  this 
large  employer  of  labor. 

Furthermore,  the  opportunities  for  study 
and  training  along  these  lines  of  interest 
have  been  brought  within  the  reach  of  thou- 
sands of  men  and  women  to  whom  they  were 
formerly  denied.  The  public  libraries,  with 
great  shelves  of  books  upon  social,  industrial, 
and  political  problems,  are  everywhere.  The 
papers  and  magazines  dealing  with  these 
questions  are  in  the  homes  of  all  but  the  very 
poorest  of  the  people.  The  sons  and  daugh- 
ters of  the  workingmen  are  finding  their  way 
in  large  numbers  to  the  colleges  and  universi- 
ties of  the  land,  where  they  often  put  to 


27 

shame  the  sons  of  good  fortune  by  the  fidelity 
and  thoroughness  they  show  in  making  use  of 
their  advantages.  We  are  all  students  of 
economics  these  days — it  is  in  everything  we 
read  and  in  everything  we  hear.  It  is  in  the 
clubs  and  in  the  churches;  it  is  in  the  air. 
And  out  of  all  this  there  will  come  more  men 
and  more  women  who  are  competent,  as  well 
as  willing,  to  point  the  way  to  a  better  type  of 
industrial  life.  " Education  has  already  made 
labor  observant,  and  a  more  perfect  organi- 
zation will  make  it  formidable." 

In  the  second  place  we  find  that  this  ancient 
labor  leader  began  his  work  in  the  wrong 
mood  and  with  the  wrong  methods.  He  came 
out  one  day  and  saw  an  Egyptian  taskmaster 
beating  a  Hebrew  slave.  His  instant  sym- 
pathy for  the  oppressed  and  his  race  con- 
sciousness impelled  him  to  act.  Here  was  a 
wrong  to  be  righted !  He  caught ' l  the  nearest 
way,"  as  Lady  Macbeth  suggested  to  her 
husband.  He  took  the  law  into  his  own  hands. 
He  promptly  killed  the  fellow  and  hid  his 
body  in  the  sand. 

This  mistaken  leader  undertook  the  social 
deliverance  of  his  people  by  a  policy  of  per- 
sonal violence.  Class  feeling,  race  loyalty, 
sympathy  for  the  helpless  were  strong  in  his 
breast,  and  he  gave  to  all  this  instant  and 


28  SOCIAL   REBUILDEKS 

perilous  expression  by  his  act  of  murder.  It 
reacted  upon  him  most  unfavorably  and  he 
was  compelled  to  flee  for  his  life.  He  went  off 
into  the  land  of  Midian,  where  he  kept  sheep 
in  that  lonely  region  for  a  period  of  forty 
years  until  he  should  have  learned  that  the 
work  of  industrial  deliverance  is  not  to  be 
undertaken  in  just  that  mood  nor  with  those 
particular  weapons. 

He  was  driven  into  the  wilderness  because 
he  undertook  to  replace  the  reign  of  law  by 
acts  of  personal  violence.  He  had  yet  to  dis- 
cover that  the  right  road  out  of  industrial 
bondage  must  lead  inevitably  along  the  foot 
of  Mount  Sinai.  The  "new  social  order" 
must  come  down  out  of  heaven  from  God  as 
an  essential  part  of  that  infinite  moral  order 
which  enfolds  us  all. 

In  many  countries  of  the  old  world  there  is 
at  this  hour  abundant  evidence  of  that  same 
mistaken  form  of  impulse  which  swept  this 
ancient  leader  off  his  feet.  There  have  been 
few  more  careful  observers  of  conditions  dur- 
ing the  Great  War  than  Sir  Philip  Gibbs. 
Here  is  his  recent  comment  upon  the  situa- 
tion in  Europe:  "The  greatest  failure  of  all 
in  my  judgment  has  been  the  failure  of  labor. 
I  am  for  labor,  having  seen  its  men  fighting 
and  dying  in  great  masses  for  no  selfish  pur- 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS  29 

poses.  Therefore  many  of  us  hoped  most 
from  labor  and  looked  for  leaders  in  its  ranks 
who  would  show  us  the  way  out  of  our  pres- 
ent jungle.  We  thought  that  they  would  give 
the  call  to  a  new  fellowship  of  men,  that  they 
would  overstep  the  narrow  frontiers  of  na- 
tional interest,  that  they  would  get  a  new 
honesty  into  politics  and  show  the  power  of 
open  diplomacy.  But  have  they  done  any  of 
these  things? 

"I  see  leaders  of  a  small,  pettifogging 
spirit  fighting  for  'two-bob'  extra  on  the 
wages  of  their  men  while  their  European  com- 
rades are  starving  for  coal.  I  see  only  the 
selfishness  of  class  interest,  as  greedy  as  that 
of  the  profiteer,  without  any  regard  for  the 
welfare  of  the  nation  as  a  whole  or  for  the 
needs  of  Europe  in  distress.  They  refuse  to 
'delute  labor'  in  the  interest  of  the  men  who 
fought  for  them  or  with  them.  Eecent  his- 
tory convicts  them  of  a  secret  diplomacy  as 
bad  as  that  of  old  statesmanship.  Their 
press  has  not  been  more  honest  than  the  capi- 
talist press  which  labor  has  denounced.  The 
appeals  of  their  leaders  have  not  been  to  the 
generous  instincts  of  humanity,  nor  on  behalf 
of  the  world  in  agony,  nor  to  any  noble  ideals 
toward  which  we  may  all  grope  our  way,  but 
to  the  same  little  tricky,  selfish  interests  with 


30 

an  underlying  menace  of  the  bloody  things 
which  have  been  the  curse  of  national  politics 
as  the  game  has  been  played  by  their  op- 
ponents. ' ' 

We  can  sympathize  with  the  resentment  of 
that  ancient  leader  who  killed  the  cruel  task- 
master even  while  we  withhold  our  'approval 
from  his  method.  He  had  the  heart  of  a  man 
and  he  struck  out  man-fashion  at  the  oppres- 
sor, but  they  were  not  blows  which  were 
counted  to  him  for  righteousness.  The  hot 
indignation  of  youth  at  the  sight  of  injustice 
has  immense  moral  value,  but  it  must  be  in- 
vested with  deeper  meaning  and  attach  itself 
to  finer  issues  if  it  would  accomplish  results 
worthy  and  lasting.  The  high  task  of  social 
betterment  cannot  be  undertaken  in  anger  or 
in  hatred — it  calls  for  the  spirit  of  moral 
faith.  It  will  never  have  adequate  spiritual 
energy  to  gain  the  ends  proposed  until  it 
reaches  the  place  where  it  puts  the  shoes 
from  off  its  feet  because  it  stands  on  holy 
ground.  It  must  see  with  its  own  eyes  that 
symbol  of  the  Divine  Presence  in  the  mys- 
terious fire  which  burns  and  does  not  con- 
sume. In  the  long  run  and  in  the  last  analysis 
nothing  is  strong  and  nothing  is  good  with- 
out the  consecration  of  a  finer  form  of 
faith. 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  31 

I  have  wondered  oftentimes  if  it  might  not 
be  well  for  some  of  the  leaders  of  the  I.  W.  W. 
and  other  kindred  organizations  here  in  our 
own  country  to  go  off  for  a  time  and  enjoy  in 
similar  fashion  a  quiet  season  of  reflection  in 
the  land  of  Midian.  The  idea  that  any  individ- 
ual who  can  talk  loud,  write  with  red  ink,  and 
throw  bombs  upon  occasion  should  be  encour- 
aged to  upset  all  our  existing  arrangements  in 
order  to  introduce  some  untried  scheme  of 
his  own  does  not  commend  itself  to  the  judg- 
ment of  those  who  really  have  the  interests 
of  the  working  people  at  heart.  It  has  been 
well  said  that  there  are  men  all  about  us  who 
undertake  to  doctor  society  on  the  strength 
of  their  own  happy  intuitions  and  their  own 
love  of  hearing  themselves  explode.  The 
term  "quack"  which  we  apply  to  those  who 
attempt  to  practice  medicine  in  that  same 
rough-and-ready  fashion  would  be  entirely  in 
order  here. 

The  working  people  to-day  will  be  misled 
if  they  think  that  breaking  the  wrists  or  the 
heads  of  men  who  refuse  to  join  their  indus- 
trial sect,  or  dynamiting  the  homes  of  men 
who  insist  upon  their  right  to  work  on  terms 
of  their  own  choosing,  or  destroying  the 
property  of  men  who  will  not  be  converted 
to  the  particular  theories  advanced  by  certain 


32  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

agitators,  will  advance  their  interests.  All 
this  moral  defiance  and  contempt  for  prin- 
ciple will  react  in  frightful  fashion  upon 
those  who  undertake  to  practice  it.  It  will 
fail  inevitably,  and  it  ought  to  fail. 

Every  effort  and  every  utterance  which 
looks  toward  contempt  for  law  or  toward 
the  spread  of  mob  violence  defeats  the  very 
ends  it  may  have  in  view.  The  whole  nation 
applauded  the  Governor  of  Kentucky  a  year 
ago  when  he  upheld  the  majesty  of  the  law. 
A  colored  man  there  had  been  guilty  of  a  foul 
crime.  He  had  been  arrested,  tried,  con- 
victed, and  sentenced  to  death.  He  was  in 
prison  awaiting  the  execution  of  that  sen- 
tence when  a  mob  undertook  to  break  into 
the  jail  that  it  might  lynch  him  or  torture  or 
burn  him  alive.  Then  the  Governor  told  the 
mob  that  the  state  of  Kentucky  was  under  the 
reign  of  law  and  that  he  was  there  to  enforce 
its  demands.  And  he  did  it,  even  though  it 
cost  the  lives  of  half  a  dozen  of  the  leaders  of 
that  mob.  White  men  and  black  men  alike 
the  country  over  approved  the  courage  and 
the  righteousness  of  his  action. 

Here  in  this  broad  land,  where  all  power 
belongs  at  last  to  the  people,  there  is  no  man- 
ner of  excuse  for  deeds  of  violence,  for  dyna- 
miting the  homes  and  the  places  of  business 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES  33 

belonging  to  others,  or  for  assassination.  If 
the  laws  are  not  right,  change  them.  If  they 
are  not  being  enforced  by  the  officials  who  are 
in  power,  let  the  people  elect  men  who  will 
enforce  them.  Here  in  this  country  authority 
is  not  handed  down  from  above  by  some 
superman  or  supermen — it  is  handed  up  by 
the  votes  of  the  people  themselves.  And  it  is 
the  last  act  of  insane  folly  and  of  open 
wickedness  for  the  working  people  or  for  any 
set  of  people  to  try  to  overthrow  the  orderly 
processes  of  government  for  which  they  them- 
selves are  finally  responsible  in  order  to  re- 
place them  with  the  irresponsible  action  of 
mob  violence.  Let  all  such  go  off  into  the 
land  of  Midian  to  keep  sheep,  for  forty  years 
if  need  be,  as  Moses  did,  until  they  too  learn 
the  spirit  and  the  temper  in  which  social 
progress  is  achieved! 

But  in  order  to  avail  ourselves  of  the  value 
of  such  reflection,  there  must  be  opportunity 
for  the  open  discussion  of  these  high  themes. 
The  right  to  freedom  of  speech  for  which 
brave  men  in  other  days  have  fought  and  died 
must  not  be  yielded  up  at  the  behest  of  small 
but  well-financed  groups  of  reactionaries. 
Let's  talk  it  out  together!  By  the  beat  and 
play  of  mind  upon  mind  in  the  freest  inter- 
change of  thought  and  conviction  touching 


34  SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES 

these  vast  issues  are  we  to  make  our  way 
toward  those  conclusions  which  may  be  al- 
lowed to  stand. 

Wise  and  cautious  economists  in  all  lands 
are  gravely  theorizing  over  the  proper  dis- 
tribution of  what  is  produced  between  capital 
and  management  and  labor.  "But  in  the 
roar  of  the  mill,  in  the  machine  shops,  in 
mines,  and  in  railways  where  labor  is  thrown 
together  and  organizes  itself,  this  dispute 
over  the  respective  shares  is  becoming  so 
charged  with  hostilities  that  the  legal  and 
police  system  in  most  countries  is  put  to  the 
greatest  strain. 

"This  strain  is  increasing  if  we  mean  by 
that  a  growing  determination  on  the  part  of 
labor  to  break  down  the  kind  of  authority 
which  ownership  and  management  have  as- 
sumed to  be  theirs.  The  strain  means  more 
than  this  because  that  part  of  our  wage-earn- 
ers bent  either  upon  the  destruction  of  the 
wage  system  or  upon  very  radical  changes  is  a 
growing  and  a  more  determined  proportion  of 
our  population."1  We  must  maintain  at  any 
cost  within  reason  that  dearly  bought  privi- 
lege of  free  speech,  both  as  a  fundamental 
human  right  and  as  a  safety  valve  for  that 

1  Reprinted  from  Labor's  Challenge  to  the  Social  Order  (p.  423),  by 
John  Brooks,  by  permission  of  the  publishers,  The  Macmillan  Company. 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  35 

high  pressure  of  resentment  which  may  so 
easily  become  a  social  menace. 

In  the  third  place,  this  ancient  labor  leader 
was  finally  fitted  for  his  task  by  an  open 
vision  of  God.  He  was  inducted  into  a  richer 
form  of  experience  which  gave  him  a  vivid 
and  immediate  sense  of  the  Divine.  In  the 
very  forefront  of  his  intellectual  and  moral 
landscape  there  came  to  be  a  Presence,  Su- 
preme, August,  Beneficent.  This  Presence 
was  always  there,  enjoining  upon  men  the 
performance  of  their  duty,  hallowing  their 
worship,  sanctifying  their  hearts,  their  ac- 
tions, and  their  purposes,  directing  them  in 
their  efforts  to  establish  that  quality  of  com- 
munity life  worthy  to  be  known  as  "His 
Kingdom."  In  a  word,  this  labor  leader  be- 
came '  *  a  man  of  God, ' '  and  that  one  fact  put 
iron  in  his  blood,  oxygen  in  the  lungs  of  his 
moral  nature,  and  gave  reach  and  grasp  to  his 
aspiration. 

He  led  his  flock  one  day  to  the  back  of  the 
desert,  even  to  Horeb,  the  Mount  of  God. 
This  rocky  eminence  was  then  regarded  as 
the  earthly  dwelling  place  of  the  Hebrew 
Deity.  He  saw  there  a  fire  which  burned  but 
did  not  consume.  He  heard  a  voice  which 
seemed  divine.  The  voice  spoke  to  him,  not 
about  his  own  personal  salvation;  it  spoke 


36  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

not  of  some  hope  of  happiness  in  a  blessed 
hereafter.  It  spoke  to  him  in  terms  of  social 
interest  touching  his  own  immediate  responsi- 
bility. 

What  deep  notes  are  struck  by  the  four 
successive  statements  1 — they  fall  upon  our 
ears  like  the  tolling  of  some  distant  cathedral 
bell:  "I  am  the  God  of  thy  fathers.  I  have 
seen  the  affliction  of  my  people  who  are  in 
Egypt.  I  have  heard  their  cry  by  reason  of 
their  taskmasters.  I  know  their  sorrows.  I 
have  come  down  to  deliver  them."  It  was  the 
God  of  righteousness  who  was  thus  voicing 
his  interest  in  a  body  of  working  people. 

How  much  it  meant  to  that  lonely  shepherd 
there  on  the  slopes  of  Horeb,  thinking  all  the 
while  of  his  fellow  countrymen  toiling  as 
slaves  in  the  valley  of  the  Nile!  How  much 
it  means  to  us  facing  as  we  do  the  necessity 
for  a  larger  measure  of  industrial  peace  and 
a  more  evenly  spread  prosperity  here  in  our 
own  great  land !  The  assurance  of  the  divine 
interest  in  all  these  problems,  of  the  divine 
compassion  for  those  who  suffer  hurt,  of  the 
divine  readiness  to  aid  in  a  worthy  solution! 
The  outward  setting  of  this  scene  is  in  a  place 
and  a  time  far  removed  from  our  modern 
American  life,  but  the  content  of  the  picture 
applies  to  the  conditions  confronting  us  as 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  37 

directly  as  if  it  had  all  been  written  yester- 
day in  the  city  of  New  York.  God  sees  and 
God  hears!  God  knows,  and  God  is  come 
down  to  aid  in  the  deliverance  of  any  whose 
lives  are  made  bitter  by  hard  bondage. 

The  people  who  think  that  God  is  only  in- 
terested in  us  when  we  are  reading  our  Bibles 
and  saying  our  prayers,  when  we  are  going 
to  church  or  taking  the  sacrament,  must  think 
that  he  is  a  Being  narrow-minded  and  short- 
sighted. They  must  think  that  he  is  asleep 
most  of  the  time,  for  only  a  small  fraction  of 
our  thought  and  strength  is  consumed  in  the 
performance  of  these  acts  of  devotion.  God 
is  interested  in  all  these  questions  of  wages 
and  hours,  in  the  sort  of  conditions  which  ob- 
tain in  mills  and  in  mines,  in  the  employment 
of  women  and  children  for  those  exacting  in- 
dustries which  overtax  and  undermine  their 
strength.  He  is  interested  in  that  sense  of 
economic  insecurity,  in  the  feeling  of  uncer- 
tainty touching  employment,  in  the  dread  of 
an  unsustained  old  age  in  which  so  many 
workers  spend  all  the  best  years .  of  their 
lives.  He  is  saying  to  us  as  he  said  of  old, 
"I  have  seen  and  I  have  heard;  I  know  and 
I  am  come  down"  to  aid  in  having  all  this 
changed  for  the  better. 

I  am  fully  aware  that  there  are  short- 


38  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

sighted  men,  needing  glasses  without  know- 
ing it,  who  are  inclined  to  brush  the  religious 
motive  entirely  aside.  They  insist  upon  '  *  the 
economic  interpretation  of  history, "  which  is 
an  ambitious  attempt  to  account  for  every- 
thing on  the  basis  of  a  single  set  of  facts, 
leaving  out  of  consideration  other  forces 
which  are  even  more  potent.  They  insist 
upon  "the  class  struggle,'*  forgetting  ap- 
parently that  "we  are  all  members  one  of 
another,"  and  if  one  class  suffers,  all  the 
other  classes  suffer  with  it.  They  insist  that 
everything  may  be  trusted  to  "the  push  of 
self-interest,"  if  only  that  self-interest  can 
be  made  intelligent  and  organized,  forgetting 
that  the  bravest  deeds  are  done,  the  finest 
words  are  uttered,  and  the  loveliest  types  of 
devotion  are  developed  almost  uniformly  by 
the  strength  of  motives  altogether  higher 
than  anything  to  be  found  in  the  push  of  self- 
interest.  These  men  all  need  to  go  back  and 
stand  with  this  ancient  labor  leader  at  Horeb 
until  they  too  hear  the  same  divine  voice. 

The  narrow-minded  selfishness  of  certain 
industrial  leaders  in  England  was  recently 
rebuked  by  one  of  their  own  number  in  these 
telling  phrases.  "Too  many  of  us  are  saying 
these  days,  'It's  our  turn  now.'  How  many 
labor  leaders  have  had  a  word  to  say  in  all 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS  39 

these  months  about  the  worth  of  work  done 
in  honor?  'Fewer  hours  and  more  pay'  has 
been  the  battle  cry.  The  bad  workman  de- 
mands the  same  wage  as  the  good,  and  the 
right  of  the  employer  to  discharge  is  denied 
him  by  the  threat  of  a  boycott  from  the  union. 
The  labor  leader  has  been  no  kinder  to  his 
own  class  than  the  former  master  of  their 
fate  has  been.  Capital  squeezes  out  the  weak 
competitor,  but  labor  would  cut  off  the  chil- 
dren of  a  whole  city  from  their  milk  for  an 
added  per  cent  in  carrying  it.  The  laborer 
would  silence  the  telephone  and  let  coal  lie 
at  the  wharf  in  freezing  weather  for  an  in- 
creased wage  while  his  neighbor  shivers." 
Selfishness  never  did  build  a  world  fit  for 
people  to  live  in,  and  selfishness  never  can. 
I  am  an  American  citizen — it  is  the  glory 
of  my  life  that  my  lot  has  been  cast  here 
under  these  friendly  skies.  I  am  proud  of  the 
history  of  our  country,  and  I  rejoice  in  the 
quality  of  the  great  men  she  has  produced. 
You  would  all  agree  with  me  no  doubt  that 
the  two  greatest  names-  in  our  American  his- 
tory are  those  of  Washington  and  Lincoln. 
How  much  it  means  that  they  were  both  men 
of  vision,  men  of  faith,  men  of  prayer !  You 
have  all  seen  the  picture  of  "Washington  on 
his  knees  at  Valley  Forge.  He  knelt  there 


40  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

before  God  because  he  felt  that  the  struggle 
of  the  colonies  to  achieve  their  independence 
and  "to  assume  among  the  powers  of  the 
earth  that  separate  and  equal  station  to  which 
the  laws  of  nature  and  of  nature's  God  en- 
titled them"  could  not  succeed  without  divine 
help. 

You  may  also  have  seen  John  Drinkwater's 
play  where  Abraham  Lincoln  stands  before 
the  map  of  the  United  States,  erect,  resolute, 
and  determined.  He  was  looking  that  map 
over,  north,  south,  east,  and  west,  as  if  he 
were  conscious  already  that  during  his  four 
years  in  the  White  House  it  would  be  blood- 
stained almost  beyond  recognition.  Then  a 
moment  later,  feeling  his  inadequacy  to  the 
great  task  laid  upon  him,  you  saw  him  kneel 
that  he  might  receive  divine  help  to  save  the 
Union  and  to  write  the  charter  of  freedom 
for  a  subject  race.  In  these  great  hard 
hours  of  the  world's  history,  when  the  prob- 
lems of  industry  and  of  statesmanship  are  so 
grave  that  they  fairly  stagger  the  human 
mind  and  heart,  what  better  thing  can  we 
do  than  to  direct  the  people  everywhere  to 
look  for  aid  and  guidance  from  that  same 
Infinite  Source  whence  it  was  sought  by 
Washington  and  by  Lincoln! 

The  social  question  is  always  and  every- 


SOCIAL   KEBUILDERS  41 

where  a  great  deal  more  than  a  question  of 
bread  and  butter,  of  dollars  and  cents,  of 
wages  and  hours.  It  is  a  question  of  human 
values.  And  for  the  gaining  and  maintenance 
of  those  higher  values  which  are  at  stake  in 
this  huge  process  of  production,  distribution, 
and  exchange,  we  need  the  religious  motive 
and  the  power  of  spiritual  vision.  Without 
that  we  cannot  succeed — with  that,  in  the  end, 
we  cannot  fail. 

You,  as  students  in  De  Pauw  University, 
have  a  very  direct  responsibility  in  this  mat- 
ter. The  college  man  is  under  peculiar  obliga- 
tions to  use  his  training  with  fidelity  and  con- 
science. He  has  been  put  in  trust  with  these 
advantages,  now  let  him  give  a  good  account 
of  his  stewardship!  He  has  received  five 
talents  of  opportunity,  now  let  him  gain  five 
talents  more  through  competent  service !  The 
torn  and  troubled  condition  of  the  world  you 
are  to  live  in  has  multiplied  that  standing 
obligation  by  ten.  The  spirit  of  unrest  is 
everywhere  and  the  spirit  of  unreason  has 
widened  its  domain.  There  are  movements 
of  thought  and  feeling  just  beneath  the  sur- 
face of  our  American  life  which  are  a  menace 
to  the  strength  and  the  stability  of  the  Repub- 
lic. There  is  a  loud  call  everywhere  for  men 
who  can  see,  men  who  can  think,  men  who 


42  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

can  do  the  things  which  need  to  be  done  in  this 
day  of  rebuilding. 

And  the  price  of  competence  in  meeting 
that  obligation  is  hard,  serious,  manly  study 
of  the  facts  and  principles  which  underlie 
these  questions.  You  cannot  hope  to  gain  that 
knowledge  of  these  economic  and  political 
problems,  these  educational  and  religious 
problems,  which  will  enable  you  to  do  your 
bit  by  a  series  of  clever  guesses  or  on  the 
strength  of  a  few  happy  intuitions.  The  man 
who  reads  nothing  in  his  morning  paper  but 
the  sporting  page  and  the  amusement  col- 
umns will  not  know  what  kind  of  a  world  he 
is  living  in.  The  man  who  has  no  taste  for 
talking  out  with  his  fellows  in  serious  fashion 
the  graver  issues  will  skate  along  over  the 
surface  of  life  and  when  he  is  brought  up 
against  some  situation  which  offers  a  chal- 
lenge to  the  best  powers  which  can  be  brought 
to  bear  he  will  show  himself  as  helpless  as  a 
child.  If  you  never  did  it  before,  do  it  now ! 
Take  one  long,  square  look  at  this  world 
which  has  been  torn  to  pieces  by  the  Great 
War  and  then  resolve  once  for  all  that  by 
steady,  strenuous  effort  you  will  fit  yourself 
to  perform  your  particular  bit  of  that  huge, 
hard  task  in  this  day  of  social  rebuilding. 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  prophet  Elijah  has  been  called  "the 
Prophet  of  Fire."  He  was  a  red-hot  sort  of 
man.  He  first  appears  upon  the  scene  with 
the  threat  of  a  coming  drought  which  would 
scorch  the  land  of  Israel  as  a  punishment 
for  the  wrongdoing  of  the  people.  His  words 
of  rebuke  to  the  guilty  king  and  queen  who 
ruled  and  robbed  the  subject  nation  were  like 
coals  of  fire.  He  sought  to  burn  out  the  sin 
of  the  nation  by  the  fervent  heat  of  his  moral 
indignation.  He  won  his  victory  over  the 
priests  of  Baal  at  the  top  of  Mount  Carmel 
by  calling  upon  God  to  '  *  answer  by  fire. ' '  He 
is  said  to  have  left  this  world  "in  a  chariot 
of  fire." 

His  flaming  methods  may  have  been  im- 
perative. There  are  situations  where  fire  is 
"indicated"  as  the  physicians  say  in  their 
careful  diagnosis — no  remedy  less  radical 
meets  the  situation.  No  soft-spoken,  mild- 
mannered  apostle  discoursing  on  "sweetness 
and  light"  could  have  won  out  in  the  face  of 

43 


44  SOCIAL   EEBUILDEBS 

the  flagrant,  impudent  wrongdoing  of  that 
day.  The  fever  of  sinfulness  in  the  body  of 
Israel's  life  had  reached  such  a  stage  that  the 
hot  poultice  of  denunciation  was  needed  to 
blister  the  surface  of  the  inflamed  portion 
into  some  promise  of  recovery.  It  was  said 
of  the  One  who  came  to  make  all  things  new 
and  to  build  an  order  of  life  which  should 
manifest  his  glory,  "He  shall  baptize  you 
with  the  Holy  Ghost  and  with  fire." 

The  king  of  Israel  in  Elijah's  day  was  a 
wicked  but  weak-kneed  individual  whose 
name  was  Ahab.  While  he  was  a  mere  boy 
his  f atiher  had  married  him  to  a  Tyrian  prin- 
cess. It  seemed  to  the  short-sighted  poli- 
ticians of  that  day  a  very  clever  thing  to  do. 
They  nodded  their  heads  in  glad  approval. 
It  was  "good  business"  to  have  those  valu- 
able Phosnician  ports  thus  opened  to  Hebrew 
trade.  More  than  that,  an  alliance  by  mar- 
riage with  the  rulers  of  Tyre  in  the  north 
might  strengthen  Israel  against  the  encroach- 
ments of  Assyria,  which  had  been  pushing 
south  with  her  victorious  armies.  It  was  be- 
fore the  time  of  "open  covenants  openly  ar- 
rived at"  and  the  clever  diplomats  may  well 
have  found  "fourteen  points"  where  this  al- 
liance with  the  kingdom  of  Tyre  would  be 
good  for  Israel. 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  45 

But  there  was  a  big,  nasty  fly  in  this  pot 
of  Phoenician  ointment — in  fact  two  of  them. 
I  wish  to  speak  of  them  both  in  this  story  of 
that  prophet  who  fought  the  wicked  king. 

In  the  first  place,  the  prophet  fought 
against  the  degradation  of  the  national  soul 
by  the  introduction  of  a  false  mode  of  wor- 
ship. When  this  Phoenician  princess  mar- 
ried the  young  Hebrew  king  she  brought  with 
her  not  only  a  strange  face  and  a  strange 
tongue,  she  brought  alien  manners  and  an 
alien  faith.  She  brought  her  pagan  deities 
with  her  and  called  upon  her  husband  to  build 
an  altar  to  the  heathen  god  Baal  in  the  valley 
of  Samaria.  She  brought  her  pagan  priests 
to  maintain  the  religious  cult  to  which  she 
had  been  accustomed,  for  a  princess  must  be 
allowed  spiritual  privileges  of  her  own  choos- 
ing. The  first  thing  the  Hebrew  nation  knew, 
it  had  a  section  of  full-fledged  heathenism  set 
up  in  active  operation  at  the  very  heart  of  its 
own  life. 

It  was  no  mere  question  of  words  and 
names ;  the  spelling  of  the  title  of  their  deity 
with  four  letters  B-A-A-L,  or  with  seven  let- 
ters, J-E-H-0-V-A-H.  It  was  a  question  of 
the  character  which  those  deities  possessed  in 
the  minds  of  their  respective  worshipers.  It 
was  a  question  as  to  the  influence  of  the 


46  SOCIAL  EEBUILDEES 

homage  paid  them  as  registered  upon  the 
lives  of  men.  Jehovah  was  a  God  of  right- 
eousness, he  was  a  covenant-making  and  a 
covenant-keeping  God. 

The  Semitic  peoples  were  in  that  day,  as 
they  are  to  this  hour,  a  bargaining  people. 
The  commercial  instinct  was  present  and  ac- 
tive, giving  them  a  quick  sense  of  the  sacred- 
ness  of  agreements  and  of  the  value  of  the 
principle  of  equivalents.  And  the  moral 
teaching  of  the  Hebrews  was  steeped  in  that 
idea.  They  believed  beyond  a  peradventure 
that  "with  the  same  measure  we  mete  it  out, 
it  shall  be  measured  back  to  us  again. ' '  They 
had  scant  regard  for  those  backward  and  be- 
nighted races  who  gave  their  allegiance  to 
gods  who  were  notionate,  whimsical,  and  not 
to  be  depended  upon.  The  bargaining  Semite, 
who  knew  the  methods  of  honorable  and 
profitable  trade,  insisted  that  the  Almighty 
himself  was  a  righteous  Dealer  who  kept  his 
word  with  his  people  and  insisted  that  they 
too  should  stand  to  the  bargains  they  had 
made  with  him.  He  was  a  covenant-making 
and  a  covenant-keeping  God. 

In  a  word,  the  Jews  had  come  to  believe 
that  Jehovah  was  a  God  of  character — he 
would  be  pleased  with  obedience  to  the  law  of 
justice,  mercy,  and  truth  and  with  nothing 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  47 

less.  Baal,  on  the  other  hand,  was  an  idol 
with  a  friendly  feeling  for  licentiousness.  He 
was  not  inclined  to  make  his  devotees  uncom- 
fortable in  their  sins.  He  never  intruded 
upon  them  with  any  disturbing  ideals.  We 
can  see  at  a  glance  how  different  would  be 
the  results  wrought  out  by  these  respective 
cults  of  worship. 

We  may  witness  the  same  confusion  of  in- 
terest and  the  same  outworking  of  diverse 
results  in  the  homage  paid  in  our  modern  life. 
We  find  many  men  and  women  who  worship 
the  living  God,  the  God  and  Father  of  our 
Lord  Jesus  Christ.  He  is  a  being  of  too  pure 
eyes  to  look  upon  any  kind  of  wrongdoing 
with  approval.  He  calls  upon  those  who  wor- 
ship him  for  obedience,  for  devotion,  for  self- 
sacrifice.  "Be  ye  holy,"  he  is  forever  saying 
to  them  by  all  the  legitimate  appointments  of 
our  Christian  faith,  "for  I  am  holy." 

But  there  are  other  men  who  make  to  them- 
selves images,  not  always  from  gold  and  sil- 
ver or  from  wood  and  stone.  They  frame  up 
these  little  homemade  deities  from  notions  of 
their  own  choosing.  They  want  a  religion 
which  will  not  interfere  with  their  self-indul- 
gent lives"  or  with  their  money-getting  accord- 
ing to  methods  which  would  not  square  with 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  They  put  in  the 


48  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

place  of  God  that  which  is  not  God ;  and  when 
any  such  substitution  is  made  I  care  not  how 
graceful  and  polite  they  may  be  about  it,  they 
too  become  out-and-out  pagans. 

You  will  sometimes  hear  a  man  beating  the 
air  with  some  empty  claim  like  this : '  *  It  does 
not  matter  what  a  man  believes  if  he  is  only 
sincere.  If  he  is  a  sincere  Moslem,  it  is  just 
the  same  as  if  he  were  a  sincere  Christian.*' 
And  this  religious  moonshine  is  sometimes 
supposed  to  indicate  a  very  advanced  and  lib- 
eral type  of  mind. 

But  look  at  the  effect  of  the  Moslem  re- 
ligion as  compared  with  the  Christian  upon 
the  status  of  woman,  upon  the  proper  nurture 
and  training  of  childhood,  upon  the  develop- 
ment of  civic  and  economic  ideals.  Look  at 
the  conduct  of  the  leading  Christian  nations 
of  the  world  as  compared  with  the  conduct  of 
the  leading  Moslem  countries.  Can  anyone 
imagine  any  Christian  nation  on  earth  doing 
to  any  people  what  the  Moslem  government 
of  Turkey  has  done  to  the  helpless  Arme- 
nians during  the  last  twenty-five  years?  The 
slaughter  of  men,  the  outraging  of  women, 
the  cruelty  unspeakable  to  little  children- 
all  this  was  done  not  by  some  criminal  out- 
laws who  had  broken  away  from  the  re- 
straints of  government  or  by  small  groups  of 


SOCIAL  EEBUILDEES  49 

soldiers  reacting  from  the  stern  discipline  of 
military  life  in  war  time.  It  was  done,  as  is 
almost  universally  believed,  with  the  ap- 
proval, if  not  with  the  direct  connivance,  of 
the  Moslem  government  at  Constantinople. 
It  does  make  a  tremendous  difference  what 
men  believe  and  how  they  worship. 

It  is  a  mark  of  mental  indolence  and  of 
moral  laxity  for  anyone  to  maintain  that  it 
does  not  matter  what  one  believes  if  only  he 
is  sincere.  It  is  for  every  serious-minded 
person  to  make  it  the  business  of  his  life  to 
square  his  faith  with  the  facts  so  that  his 
belief  will  point  to  spiritual  reality  as  the 
needle  to  the  pole.  No  other  attitude  could 
be  acceptable  to  Him  who  said,  "I  am  the 
truth;  and  ye  shall  know  the  truth;  and  the 
truth  shall  make  you  free."  The  right  sort 
of  worship  will  free  the  life  from  all  that 
hurts  or  hinders  life ! 

When  a  man  worships  he  holds  before  the 
eyes  of  his  soul  some  supreme  conception  of 
spiritual  excellence.  He  says  to  himself  and 
to  all  hands : "  I  adore  that.  I  give  to  that  the 
final  allegiance  of  my  heart.  I  swear  to  that 
an  undying  loyalty.  I  desire  at  last  to  be  like 
that."  If  he  is  saying  all  this  to  a  being  of 
Holy  Love,  the  effect  of  it  upon  his  own  in- 
most life  will  be  one  thing.  If  he  is  saying  it  to 


50  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

a  Moslem  deity  of  cruelty  and  bloodshed,  or  to 
a  Phoenician  deity  of  shameful  indulgence, 
then  the  effect  will  be  quite  another  thing. 
Choose  you  this  day  whom  ye  will  serve  in 
that  final  dedication  of  your  life  I 

The  nation  as  well  as  the  individual  is  pos- 
sessed of  and  by  that  which  may  fittingly  be 
called  a  soul.  The  nation  develops  and  cher- 
ishes certain  traditions  and  sentiments  which 
are  as  the  very  breath  of  life  to  its  nostrils. 
The  high  moods  and  feelings  which  find  ex- 
pression in  its  music,  its  poetry,  and  its  art 
have  in  them  a  certain  something  which,  like 
the  word  of  God,  is  "  living,  powerful,  and 
sharper  than  a  two-edged  sword. '  *  The  state 
does  not  live  by  bread  alone — there  are  cer- 
tain forms  of  energy  unseen  but  mighty  which 
are  as  much  a  part  of  its  life  as  its  agricul- 
ture, its  manufactures,  and  its  commerce. 
When  the  captain  of  an  English  ship  (which 
had  struck  an  iceberg  and  was  fast  sinking) 
stood  on  the  bridge  and  called  out  to  the 
sailors  to  put  the  women  and  children  in  the 
lifeboats  first,  regardless  of  their  own  safety, 
coupling  his  command  with  this  stout  appeal, 
"Be  British,  men!"  he  was  summoning  into 
action  the  national  soul.  His  summons  was 
not  in  vain — the  common  sailors  rose  to  it  in 
heroic  mood.  And  the  development  and  main- 


SOCIAL   REBUILDEES  51 

tenance  of  this  finer  quality  of  national  soul 
is  most  intimately  bound  up  with  the  style 
and  manner  of  the  worship  the  nation  ob- 
serves. 

This  weak-kneed  king  of  Israel,  shiver- 
ing in  the  presence  of  the  pagan  princess  he 
had  married,  first  tolerated,  then  encouraged, 
and  at  last  openly  allied  himself  with  the 
degrading  worship  of  Baal.  Then  the 
prophet  Elijah  appeared  upon  the  scene  and 
proposed  that  the  rival  claimants  upon  the 
allegiance  of  the  people  should  be  subjected 
to  this  test.  He  suggested  that  he  and  the 
priests  of  Baal  should  build  two  altars  upom 
the  top  of  Mount  Carmel;  that  they  should 
lay  their  sacrifices  upon  the  altars  and  then 
call  upon  their  respective  deities  to  answer 
by  fire.  And  the  god  who  actually  answered 
by  fire  was  to  be  proclaimed  the  God  of 
Israel.  The  proposal  met  with  instant  and 
hearty  approval  at  the  hands  of  the  people 
who  had  been  halting  between  two  opinions. 
They  uttered  their  indorsement  in  a  great 
shout — -"It  is  well  spoken." 

The  plan  proposed  was  carried  out,  and 
the  contrast  in  that  scene  upon  the  crest  of 
Mount  Carmel  was  striking.  On  one  side 
four  hundred  and  fifty  priests  of  Baal,  on 
the  other  side  Elijah  standing  alone !  On  one 


52  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

side  the  well-dressed  objects  of  the  royal 
favor,  fat,  sleek,  and  well  fed  from  the  table 
of  Jezebel ;  on  the  other  side  Elijah,  the  Tish- 
bite,  half  naked,  with  a  leather  girdle  about 
his  loins,  gaunt,  thin,  shaggy,  as  a  man  who 
had  claimed  his  scanty  fare  from  the  ravens. 
On  one  side  the  king  and  queen,  yet  with  noth- 
ing to  aid  them  save  an  empty,  useless  idol 
as  the  object  of  their  misguided  devotion ;  on 
the  other  side  the  single-handed  prophet  of 
the  living  God  who  had  at  his  command  le- 
gions of  spiritual  forces  greater  than  all  the 
armies  of  earth. 

The  people  gathered  on  the  hillside  and 
sat  through  the  livelong  day  with  Oriental 
patience.  The  priests  of  Baal  called  upon 
their  deity  from  morning  until  noon.  They 
worked  themselves  into  a  frenzy  of  excite- 
ment like  the  howling  dervishes  of  the  East. 
They  cut  themselves  with  knives  until  the 
blood  gushed  forth  in  token  of  their  des- 
perate earnestness.  They  cried  incessantly, 
"Oh  Baal,  hear  us!  Oh  Baal,  hear  us!"  But 
"there  was  neither  voice  nor  any  to  answer 
nor  any  that  regarded,"  the  sober  record 
says.  All  their  frantic  efforts  availed  noth- 
ing. They  were  earnest,  they  were  sincere, 
they  were  persistent,  but  there  was  nothing 
there.  There  was  no  such  deity  as  Baal  in 


53 

existence,  and  they  might  well  have  saved 
their  breath  and  their  blood. 

Then  in  the  quiet  of  the  evening  hour  the 
prophet  Elijah  put  his  claims  to  the  test. 
There  was  no  rant,  no  frenzy,  no  cutting  of 
his  flesh  with  knives.  He  was  calm  and  con- 
fident as  one  who  prayed  to  the  living  God. 
' '  Oh  thou  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac  and  Jacob, 
let  it  be  known  this  day  that  thou  art  God 
and  that  I  am  thy  servant.  Hear  me,  that 
these  people  may  know  that  thou  art  God  and 
that  thou  mayest  turn  their  hearts  back 
again." 

"Then  the  fire  fell,"  we  read,  on  the  altar 
of  Jehovah  and  tihe  burnt  offering  was  con- 
sumed. The  people  rose  to  it — the  God  who 
answered  by  actual  achievement  commanded 
their  allegiance.  They  uttered  their  cry, 
"Jehovah  is  God!  Jehovah  is  God!"  until  it 
echoed  and  reechoed  across  the  plain  of 
Esdraelon,  which  has  witnessed  so  many  vic- 
tories of  right  over  wrong. 

This  scene  on  Mount  Carmel  may  be  taken 
as  a  dramatic  and  poetic  presentation  of  the 
wider  test  which  is  steadily  being  applied  to 
the  rival  claimants  upon  our  allegiance.  Let 
the  religion  which  answers  by  facts  of  expe- 
rience, by  renewed  hearts,  by  loftier  moral 
purposes,  by  increased  spiritual  vigor  and 


54  SOCIAL  REBUILDEES 

by  finer  forms  of  usefulness  stand  supreme! 
Let  every  form  of  faith  be  judged  by  its 
fruits !  If  paganism  and  infidelity  would  only 
bring  forward  something  more  than  clever 
theories,  we  might  take  them  seriously.  If 
they  would  only  undertake  an  exhibit  of  the 
sound,  moral  results  consequent  upon  the  ac- 
ceptance of  their  interpretation  of  the  su- 
preme verities,  we  would  then  have  something 
to  speak  to  other  than  a  mere  array  of  idle 
talk.  In  the  meantime,  let  that  religion  which 
answers  in  terms  of  Christian  effort,  reaching 
out  in  the  name  of  Christ  with  the  hospital, 
the  school,  and  the  church  into  every  nation 
under  heaven  and  into  every  section  of  hu- 
man need,  stand  supreme! 

In  the  second  place,  this  prophet  of  God 
fought  against  the  social  injustice  of  this 
wicked  king.  There  was  a  clash  of  interest 
between  a  private  citizen,  named  Naboth,  and 
Atab,  the  king.  Naboth  had  a  vineyard  near 
the  king's  palace,  and  the  monarch  desired  it 
for  a  garden  of  herbs.  But  the  land  had  been 
in  Naboth 's  family  for  many  years  and  he 
refused  to  sell.  "The  Lord  forbid  that  I 
should  give  the  inheritance  of  my  fathers 
unto  thee."  Then  the  king  was  "peeved." 
He  went  back  to  his  palace  heavy  and  de- 
pressed. He  lay  down  upon  his  bed,  turned 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  55 

his  face  to  the  wall  and  would  not  eat.  He 
was  a  man  of  small  build  and  this  petty, 
childish  humor  was  thoroughly  characteristic. 

But  Jezebel,  his  queen,  was  no  such  weak- 
ling. ''Why  is  thy  spirit  so  sad?"  she  asked. 
When  he  told  her  the  occasion  of  his  disap- 
pointment, she  laughed  in  his  face.  That  was 
not  the  way  things  were  done  in  Tyre  nor  by 
kings  generally  in  that  rude  age.  "Rise  and 
eat  bread,"  she  said,  "and  let  thine  heart  be 
merry.  I  will  give  thee  the  vineyard  of 
Naboth."  "Lady  Macbeth  will  show  the 
Thane  of  Cawdor  how  to  become  king.  There 
is  always  a  way  to  be  bad.  The  gate  of  hell 
stands  wide  open,  or,  if  half-closed,  a  touch 
will  make  it  fly  back.  The  road  is  broad  that 
leads  to  destruction  and  the  going  is  easy." 
Jezebel  will  not  let  "I  dare  not"  wait  upon 
' '  I  would. ' '  She  was  not  * '  too  full  of  the  milk 
of  human  kindness  to  catch  the  nearest  way." 
She  believed  in  "direct  action." 

She  decided,  however,  to  show  some  regard 
for  the  outward  decencies.  She  would  dress 
up  her  wolfish  deed  in  sheep's  clothing.  She 
would  be  properly  ceremonious  about  it.  She 
wrote  letters  in  the  king's  name  and  said, 
"Proclaim,  a  fast!  Ring  the  church  bell! 
Put  on  a  surplice!  Say,  'Lord,  Lord,'  and 
sing  the  long-meter  Doxology  through  twice, 


56  SOCIAL  BEBUILDERS 

for  the  queen  is  about  to  do  an  evil  deed  in 
the  name  of  religion. J  * 

"When  the  fast  was  proclaimed  Naboth,  by 
order  of  the  queen,  was  given  an  exalted  po- 
sition among  the  people.  Then  two  paid  liars 
were  brought  forward  to  swear  that  during 
the  fast  they  had  heard  him  blaspheme  God 
and  the  king.  On  this  trumped-up  charge  of 
blasphemy  and  treason — the  same  two  charges 
brought  against  Jesus  Christ — Naboth  was 
taken  out  and  stoned  to  death.  Then  his 
property  was  confiscated  by  the  state  as  the 
property  of  a  man  convicted  of  treason.  He 
was  branded  a  felon  and  the  land  was  duly 
turned  over  to  the  king,  who  had  coveted  it 
for  a  flower  garden. 

What  an  admirable  plan  for  robbing  an  in- 
nocent man  of  his  land  and  of  his  life !  Jezebel 
was  an  artist  in  wrongdoing.  She  knew  how 
to  turn  the  trick  with  neatness  and  dispatch. 
The  program  went  through  without  a  single 
hitch  like  a  well-arranged  church  wedding 
rehearsed  in  advance.  Where  there  is  a  will 
there  is  a  way.  What  are  the  Ten  Command- 
ments among  friends  ?  When  Naboth  had  been 
stoned  to  death  on  the  false  charge,  Jezebel 
said  to  her  husband,  "Arise  and  take  your 
vineyard,  for  Naboth  is  dead. ' ' 

What  an  hour  for  a  prophet  of  righteous- 


SOCIAL   REBUILDEES  57 

ness !  His  work  was  all  cut  out  for  him  and 
laid  ready  to  his  hand.  He  saw  even  in  that 
far-off  time  that  private  citizens  have  rights 
which  cannot  be  overridden  by  wicked  kings 
or  by  grasping  queens.  He  would  let  those 
selfish,  cruel  monarchs  know  that  there  was  a 
God  in  Israel  who  could  not  be  trifled  with. 
He  was  the  tribune  of  the  people,  the  first 
great  Commoner  proclaiming  his  message 
from  on  high  that ' '  the  welfare  of  the  people 
is  the  highest  law  of  the  land." 

This  man  of  God  knew  little  or  nothing 
about  the  political  forms  of  modern  democ- 
racy, but  he  had  the  spirit  of  it.  He  walked 
by  faith  and  not  by  sight,  not  having  received 
the  promises  but  having  seen  them  afar  off. 
He  was  persuaded  of  the  fitness  of  that  better 
mode  of  life  and  he  embraced  it  and  confessed 
himself  a  stranger  and  a  pilgrim  in  such  a 
world  as  Ahab  and  Jezebel  would  have  made 
it.  He  was  heart  and  soul  for  a  better  coun- 
try. He  would  have  joined  heartily  in  this 
great  hymn  of  praise1  had  it  been  current  in 
his  day: 

"We  knelt  before  kings  and  we  bent  before  lords, 
For  theirs  were  the  crowns  and  theirs  were  the  swords. 
But  the  times  of  the  bending  and  bowing  are  past, 
For  the  day  of  the  people  is  dawning  at  last. 

'Reprinted  from  Christian  Internationalism  (p.  80),  by  W.  P.  Merrill, 
by  permission  of  the  publishers,  The  Macmillan  Company. 


58  SOCIAL  REBUILDEKS 

"Great  Day  of  the  Lord!     The  prophets  and  seers 
Have  sung  of  thy  coming  these  thousands  of  years. 
On  the  wings  of  war's  whirlwind  God's  judgments  fly 

fast, 
And  the  Day  of  the  People  is  dawning  at  last." 


The  ugly  deed  of  Ahab  had  been  done  at 
night — Naboth  was  put  out  of  the  way  under 
cover  of  darkness.  But  the  wicked  king  was 
awake  next  morning  at  daybreak.  He  started 
down  at  sunrise  to  take  possession  of  the 
coveted  vineyard.  He  rode  in  military  state 
from  Samaria  to  Jezreel,  but  his  joy  was 
short-lived.  The  news  of  his  crime  had  come 
to  Elijah,  and  this  prophet  of  God  was  on 
hand  to  utter  his  protest  against  this  act  of 
villainy.  When  the  king  drove  up  to  the  gate 
of  the  vineyard,  there  stood  the  sturdy  figure 
of  the  prophet  with  eyes  like  coals  of  fire. 

Half  in  anger  and  half  in  anguish,  for  he 
saw  that  he  had  sinned  in  vain,  the  king 
sobbed  out,  "Hast  thou  found  me,  0  mine 
enemy?"  The  stern  reply  came  back,  "I 
have  found  thee,  because  thou  hast  sold  thy- 
self to  do  evil." 

Here  was  wrongdoing  facing  righteousness 
— and  it  was  ashamed  and  afraid.  Here  was 
guilt  facing  conscience  and  it  trembled  and 
shivered  like  a  leaf  in  the  wind.  Here  was  the 
whole  method  of  seeking  pleasure  in  ways 


SOCIAL   REBUILDEKS  59 

which  God  does  not  approve,  having  the  cup 
of  joy  dashed  from  its  lips.  The  king  thought 
that  he  was  going  down  that  pleasant  morn- 
ing to  take  possession  of  a  lovely  vineyard, 
but  what  he  found  in  waiting  was  the  day  of 
judgment  in  the  person  of  that  prophet  of  the 
Lord.  He  went  down  to  play  with  his  flower 
garden  like  a  child  with  a  new  toy  and  he 
had  his  death  warrant  read  to  him. 

He  that  sitteth  in  the  heavens  shall  laugh  at 
our  puny  efforts  to  outwit  him.  Be  sure  your 
sin  will  find  you  out !  God  is  not  mocked.  What 
a  man  sows  he  reaps,  and  the  harvest  matches 
the  seed  in  kind  and  in  amount,  We  live  not  in 
a  world  of  chance  nor  of  magic,  nor  of  end- 
less good  nature — we  live  under  the  reign  of 
law,  where  every  man  will  be  judged  accord- 
ing to  the  deeds  done  in  the  body. 

Then  follows  that  terrible  denunciation  of 
the  king  and  the  queen  for  their  social  injus- 
tice. ' '  Thou  hast  sold  thyself  to  do  evil.  The 
Lord  will  bring  evil  upon  thee.  The  Lord  saw 
last  night  the  blood  of  Naboth — where  the 
dogs  licked  the  blood  of  Naboth  the  dogs  shall 
lick  thine.  And  the  dogs  shall  eat  Jezebel." 

It  was  a  fearful  threat  and  fearfully  was  it 
fulfilled.  When  we  turn  to  the  later  history 
of  this  guilty  king  and  queen,  we  find  the 
gruesome  narrative  which  records  the  fulfill- 


60  SOCIAL   BEBUILDERS 

ment  of  that  dire  prediction.  When  Jehu 
came  to  the  throne,  Ahab,  the  king,  was  slain 
in  an  open  field,  and  the  dogs  mutilated  his 
remains.  Then  Jehu  drove  to  the  royal 
palace  in  his  chariot.  He  saw  Jezebel,  the 
qneen,  looking  out  from  an  upper  window. 
She  had  painted  her  face  and  arrayed  herself 
in  finery,  hoping  by  her  personal  attractions 
to  placate  his  wrath.  He  promptly  ordered 
her  eunuchs  to  throw  her  out  of  the  window. 
The  eunuchs  saw  that  Jehu  was  now  in  the 
ascendant  and  they  instantly  complied  with 
his  stern  command.  " Throw  her  down," 
he  said,  and  when  they  threw  her  to  the  pave- 
ment, her  blood  was  sprinkled  on  Jehu's 
horses.  He  drove  his  chariot  over  her  in  ruth- 
less fashion  and  went  in  to  his  dinner.  When 
he  had  eaten,  he  said  to  his  servants,  "This 
cursed  woman  was  a  princess,  the  daughter 
of  a  king — see  to  it  iiiat  she  is  decently 
buried."  But  when  the  servants  went  forth 
to  bury  her  the  record  says  that '  *  they  found 
no  more  than  her  skull  and  the  bones  of  her 
feet  and  hands."  The  dogs  had  eaten  and 
carried  away  all  the  rest.  "I  have  seen  the 
wicked  in  great  power  and  spreading  himself 
like  a  green  bay  tree.  Yet  he  passed  away, 
and,  lo,  he  was  not.  Yea,  I  sought  for  him, 
but  he  could  not  be  found." 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  61 

This  prophet  of  the  living  God  stood  for 
the  supremacy  of  the  moral  law.  He  believed 
that  Mount  Sinai  was  the  highest  peak  on  the 
face  of  the  globe.  The  king  had  sinned 
against  Naboth  and  against  those  principles 
of  social  justice  which  underlie  all  human 
wellbeing  and  advance.  He  had  sinned 
against  Him  who  has  all  these  sacred  in- 
terests of  his  people  in  his  holy  hands.  The 
king  had  made  himself  the  enemy  of  the  race 
by  using  his  strength  to  oppress  the  weak. 
And  because  there  was  a  God  in  Israel,  that 
sort  of  thing  could  not  go  unpunished.  The 
sharp-toothed  dogs  of  the  divine  penalty  were 
sure  to  reach  the  offender  at  the  last. 

Have  we  not  need  of  the  same  sort  of  mes- 
sage from  on  high  here  in  our  own  day? 
Ahab  is  still  among  us  and  Naboth  still 
suffers  wrong.  The  strong  still  use  their  ad- 
vantage at  times  to  oppress  the  weak.  While 
the  war  was  on  there  was  another  war  being 
fought  out  in  all  the  lands  of  earth.  Its  vic- 
tories and  its  defeats  were  not  always  re- 
ported on  the  front  page  of  the  paper  with 
headlines  and  pictures.  The  advances  and 
retreats  could  not  always  be  indicated  by 
pinning  rows  of  little  flags  on  some  map  of 
the  world ;  but  it  was  none  the  less  a  real  war. 

It  was  the  war  of  the  exploited  against  the 


62  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

exploiters,  big  and  little,  rascally  and  respec- 
table, personal  and  corporate.  It  was  the 
war  of  those  who  actually  serve  society  by 
the  useful  labor  of  hand  or  of  brain  against 
those  who  have  fallen  into  the  easy,  disgrace- 
ful habit  of  eating  their  bread  by  the  sweat 
of  some  other  man's  brow.  And  the  armistice 
in  that  war  will  never  be  signed  until  the 
questions  involved  have  been  settled  and 
have  been  settled  right. 

It  must  be  steadily  borne  in  mind  that 
privilege  creates  responsibility.  "To  whom 
much  is  given  of  him  will  much  be  required." 
' '  To  own  is  to  owe. "  It  was  Ibsen  who  said, 
"A  man's  gifts  are  not  a  property;  they  are 
a  duty."  The  bare  fact  of  possession  means 
obligation.  When  the  Lord  of  the  whole  earth 
has  planted  a  vineyard  thick  with  high  privi- 
lege; when  he  has  hedged  it  about  in  provi- 
dential fashion  with  opportunities  unparal- 
leled ;  when  he  has  built  the  tower  and  dug  the 
wine  vat  and  provided  all  the  necessary  facili- 
ties for  rewarding  effort,  he  has  a  clear  right 
to  receive  the  fruits  of  that  vineyard  in  terms 
of  competent  and  unselfish  service  rendered 
by  the  recipients  of  his  bounty. 

We  have  yet  a  long  way  to  go  in  our  mod- 
ern American  life  before  that  sense  of  stew- 
ardship in  the  enjoyment  of  privilege  is 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS  63 

recognized  and  realized.  "When  thousands 
of  newspapers  are  owned  by  groups  that  use 
the  power  of  the  press  for  purposes  other 
than  moneymaking ;  when  no  man  is  honored 
simply  because  he  wastes  more  than  his  fel- 
lows; when  the  great  material  needs  of  life, 
which  are  limited  in  amount,  are  in  the  hands 
of  the  community;  when  the  great  mass  of 
ordinary  business  is  in  one  form  or  another 
cooperative,  then  shall  we  be  able  to  guide 
the  flood  of  human  thought  and  purpose  away 
from  personal  ambition  and  fear.  Then  rea- 
son and  sympathy  may  become  indeed  the 
master-motives.  It  cannot  be  said  that  such 
a  life  has  heretofore  failed,  for  it  has  never 
been  tried — individuals  have  lived  it,  but  or- 
ganized society  has  never  made  the  effort. 
For  the  first  time  since  the  world  began  we 
have  the  natural  and  technical  resources. 
Therefore  such  a  life  is  more  possible  to-day 
than  ever  in  the  past,  granted  the  will — a  will 
so  strong  and  so  moral  as  rightly  to  be  called 
religious." 

If  we  are  to  advance  toward  the  realization 
of  these  high  hopes  there  must  come  a  radical 
change  of  heart  and  a  new  mood  in  certain 
quarters.  The  spirit  of  arrogance  is  alto- 
gether too  much  in  evidence  in  these  troub- 
lous times.  It  is  a  day  which  calls  for  wise 


64  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

and  patient  action.  Hear  these  words  uttered 
not  by  some  reckless  soap-box  orator,  but  by 
Franklin  H.  Giddings,  of  Columbia  Univer- 
sity, one  of  the  most  eminent  sociologists  in 
this  country: 

"There  are  three  million  unemployed  in- 
dustrial working  persons,  men  and  women,  in 
the  United  States  now,  and  probably  there 
will  be  more.  Wages  are  being  reduced. 
These  reductions  of  force  and  pay  were  fore- 
seen, and,  by  and  large,  they  were  inevitable. 
The  wage  reductions  for  the  most  part  are 
proper  in  relation  to  the  partial  breakdown 
of  industry  and  the  downward  tendency  of 
prices. 

"Unhappily  there  is  another  factor  in  the 
situation  that  is  neither  necessary  nor  justi- 
fiable. This  is  the  vindictive  and  rather 
brutal  spirit  in  which  a  great  deal  of  the 
squeezing  and  cutting  is  being  done,  and  the 
quite  unnecessary  extent  to  which  construc- 
tive measures,  the  product  of  much  patient 
thinking  and  careful  experimenting  for  the 
better  adjustment  of  relations  between  capi- 
tal and  labor,  are  being  thrown  into  the  dis- 
card. Let  it  be  said  at  once  that  the  wiser 
and  more  far-seeing  employers  are  not  guilty. 
But  there  is  a  rabble  of  industrial  upstarts, 
new-rich  profiteers,  unintelligent,  vulgar  ruf- 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  65 

fians,  who  have  made  millions  of  ill-gotten 
gains  out  of  war  conditions,  who  are  now 
drunk  with  new  power  and  obviously  dis- 
posed to  go  the  limit  in  displaying  it. 

"A  program  of  smashing  and  repression 
is  proclaimed.  Labor  legislation  is  to  be  at- 
tacked and,  wherever  possible,  repealed; 
labor  organizations  are  to  be  crippled  or 
broken  and  'the  welfare  stuff'  cut  out.  The 
'fool  machinery'  of  adjustment  boards,  pro- 
tocols, industrial  relations  committees,  em- 
ployment secretaries,  and  'all  that  sort  of 
thing, '  are  to  be  scrapped,  and  employers  will 
get  back  to  'the  good  old  way,  the  simple 
plan'  of  dealing  with  'the  hired  help'  on  the 
Hake  it  or  leave  it'  basis.  It  is  no  secret  that 
this  attitude  was  a  big  factor  in  the  election, 
and  that  it  will  play  a  large  part  in  State 
and  national  politics  throughout  the  present 
year  and  perhaps  for  a  longer  time." 

"It  is  a  wild  and  foolhardy  sowing  of 
dragons'  teeth.  Grant  that  there  has  been 
provocation.  There  has  been  plenty  of  it. 
Labor  has  been  arrogant.  Throughout  the 
war  it  had  the  whip  hand  and  took  advantage 
of  its  opportunity.  Revolutionary  influences 
controlled  some  of  the  organizations  and  pro- 
fessional agitators  did  immeasurable  harm. 
Crazy  talk  about  a  social  revolution  became 


66  SOCIAL  EEBUILDERS 

organized  propaganda  and  often  developed 
into  direct  action.  A  great  deal  of  unwise 
and  coddling  legislation  has  been  put  on  the 
statute  books.  The  saner  and  more  conserva- 
tive labor  organizations,  as  well  as  the  radi- 
cal ones,  have  stupidly  maintained  the  policy 
of  restricting  production,  of  penalizing  ener- 
getic and  faithful  service,  and  of  carrying 
incompetents  at  full  pay.  They  have  fought 
discharges  of  worthless  and  crooked  em- 
ployees and  made  *  organization  issues  '  out  of 
their  cases. 

"It  is  human  nature  to  return  evil  for  evil, 
and  now  that  employers  have  the  whip  hand 
retaliation  is  to  be  expected.  '  Nevertheless 
it  is  folly.  Wisdom  prescribes  a  thoughtful 
study  of  the  entire  problem,  a  firm  insistence 
upon  the  rights  of  property  and  of  manage- 
ment, a  cool-headed  resumption  of  control 
over  production,  and  a  patient  attempt  to  ad- 
just real  differences  of  interest  where  these 
do  not  involve  sacrifice  of  personal  liberties, 
efficiency,  and  honorable  keeping  of  agree- 
ments. Never  were  constructive  measures, 
enlightened  views,  and  patient  effort  more 
imperatively  needed  than  now. ' ' 

The  nations  of  the  earth  are  being  chal- 
lenged in  these  grim  times  to  declare  openly 
by  what  sort  of  principles  they  mean  to  live. 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES  67 

They  are  being  summoned  to  show  of  what 
sort  of  moral  stuff  they  are  composed.  They 
are  being  called  upon  to  exhibit  the  measure 
of  moral  opposition  they  can  offer  to  that 
bulk  and  mass  of  material  force  and  national 
immorality  which  brought  upon  the  race  the 
disaster  of  the  Great  War.  And  whether 
they  like  it  or  not,  they  must  stand  up  and  be 
counted  for  or  against  the  principle  that 
"might  makes  right,"  for  or  against  the  idea 
that  any  government  is  at  liberty  to  do  any 
frightful  thing  it  may  choose  in  order  to 
"hack  its  way  through,"  for  or  against  the 
idea  that  a  ruthless  class  struggle  is  the 
proper  way  to  deal  with  industrial  problems. 
And  it  is  for  every  nation  which  has  not  lost 
its  soul  to  make  clear  beyond  a  peradventure 
that  it  holds  the  moral  issues  supreme  and 
stands  ready  to  commit  all  its  interests  to  the 
keeping  of  those  principles  of  right  which  are 
at  last  to  determine  the  outcome. 

There  are  certain  great  social  principles 
which  are  now  being  urged  on  countless  fields 
with  all  the  power  of  moral  imperatives.  The 
world  is  indeed  to  be  made  "safe  for  democ- 
racy," but  it  must  be  a  more  real  and  thor- 
oughgoing democracy  than  anything  we  have 
yet  seen  if  it  is  to  stand  the  test  of  the  trying 
times  which  await  us.  And  for  the  realization 


68  SOCIAL  EEBUILDERS 

of  those  great  social  ideals  there  must  be  in 
every  land  of  earth  a  more  resolute  and 
aspiring  national  soul.  The  man  who  thinks 
that  brawn  and  brains  alone,  without  the  re- 
newing and  directing  power  of  spiritual 
forces  at  their  best,  can  secure  and  safeguard 
human  well-being  and  advance  thereby  writes 
himself  down  a  fool. 

In  all  this  work  of  social  repair  those  wise 
words  of  the  British  Labor  party,  which 
stand  as  one  of  the  great  pronouncements 
called  forth  by  the  war,  may  well  be  borne  in 
mind:  "If  we  are  to  escape  from  the  decay 
of  civilization  itself,  we  must  build  a  new 
social  order  based  not  on  fighting  but  on  fra- 
ternity, not  on  a  competitive  struggle  for  the 
bare  means  of  life  but  upon  a  deliberately 
planned  cooperation  in  production  and  dis- 
tribution for  the  benefit  of  all  who  partici- 
pate by  hand  or  by  brain ;  not  on  the  enforced 
domination  over  subject  nations,  subject 
races,  subject  classes,  or  a  subject  sex,  but 
on  equal  freedom  in  industry  as  well  as  in 
government,  upon  that  general  consciousness 
of  consent  and  that  widest  possible  participa- 
tion in  power  which  is  characteristic  of 
democracy." 

The  privileged  lives  are  very  much  in  evi- 
dence these  days.  They  dwell  on  the  sunny 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES  69 

side  of  the  street.  They  are  clothed  in  purple 
and  fine  linen.  They  fare  sumptuously  every 
day  on  the  best  the  market  affords.  They 
ride  swiftly  to  and  fro  in  limousines  or  in 
parlor  cars.  They  are  possessed  as  often  as 
not  with  sound  health,  clear  heads  and  all  the 
advantages  of  training,  culture,  and  social 
position. 

Well  and  good — all  these  choice  things  are 
not  to  be  despised ;  they  count  in  the  final  out- 
come !  But  let  it  be  kept  clearly  in  mind  that 
all  these  advantages  spell  obligation  in  capi- 
tal letters.  "To  him  that  hath  shall  be 
given,"  the  Master  said.  It  is  always  easier 
to  get  on  when  you  are  on  already.  And  then 
swift  on  the  heels  of  that  statement  came  the 
principle  involved — ' '  To  whom  much  is  given 
of  him  will  much  be  required."  High  privi- 
lege carries  with  it  responsibilities  which 
cannot  be  evaded. 

In  many  communities,  even  in  this  land  of 
freedom,  the  strong  still  use  their  strength  to 
oppress  the  weak.  I  lived  for  nearly  fifteen 
years  in  the  State  of  California.  It  is  a  great 
oil-producing  State.  A  group  of  my  friends, 
all  of  them  men  of  modest  means,  were  pur- 
chasing a  tract  of  oil  land  which  promised 
good  returns.  They  invited  me  to  invest  in 
what  seemed  a  safe  and  profitable  enterprise. 


70  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

I  did  not  have  very  much  money  but  I  put  in 
five  hundred  dollars  of  my  savings  with  the 
others.  The  wells  were  sunk  and  they  struck 
oil  in  abundance.  There  was  a  most  encour- 
aging and  profitable  flow  of  oil  from  those 
wells. 

Then  the  company  naturally  desired  to  ship 
its  oil  to  market,  and  it  applied  to  the  rail- 
road for  cars,  as  the  tanks  were  all  full  and 
the  oil  was  still  flowing.  But  somehow  there 
was  a  delay  in  getting  cars.  Then  there  was 
a  further  delay,  and  the  delay  continued.  The 
oil  was  still  flowing  and  was  going  to  waste. 
It  did  not  seem  possible  to  ship  any  of  that 
oil  to  market.  And  when  the  truth  was  fer- 
reted out  it  was  found  that  a  certain  large 
concern  here  in  the  United  States,  which  is 
also  in  the  oil  business,  controlled  in  under- 
handed, sinister  fashion  that  railroad  and 
pretty  much  all  of  the  shipping  facilities  in 
the  State  of  California.  And  this  concern 
had  instructed  the  railroad  that  no  cars  were 
to  be  furnished  to  this  company  because  they 
wished  to  purchase  those  wells  and  that  oil 
land  at  their  own  price. 

The  owners  of  the  smaller  concern  were 
utterly  helpless — they  could  not  ship  their 
oil,  and  it  was  useless.  They  were  finally 
compelled  to  sell  at  the  price  offered  by  the 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  71 

larger  concern,  which  was  far  below  the  value 
of  the  property.  The  price  received  scarcely 
met  the  cost  of  sinking  the  wells  and  so  we 
lost  all  we  had  put  in.  It  was  not  justice. 
It  was  not  the  sort  of  commercial  method 
which  makes  for  the  well-being  of  society  or 
for  the  stability  of  the  republic.  In  plain 
English,  it  was  an  act  of  high-handed  rob- 
bery. And  that  sort  of  oppression  is  being 
practiced  to-day  in  many  communities  here  in 
our  own  land. 

In  the  face  of  such  practices  we  are  mov- 
ing swiftly  to  that  point  where  capital  may 
be  compelled  to  choose  between  confiscation 
such  as  it  has  suffered  in  the  empire  of 
Russia  or  consecration  to  those  worthier  ends 
which  would  be  its  highest  honor  and  abiding 
happiness  in  the  kingdom  of  God.  The 
Naboths  of  the  twentieth  century  will  not 
tamely  submit  to  exploitation  at  the  hands  of 
the  Ahabs  who  have  it  in  their  power  to 
wrong  the  weak. 

The  hour  has  struck  for  a  great  forward 
movement  in  the  establishment  of  social  jus- 
tice throughout  the  world.  It  is  a  task  which 
will  require  untold  amounts  of  energy  and 
of  knowledge,  of  vision  and  of  patience.  The 
bitterness  of  the  class  struggle  must  be  re- 
placed by  an  increased  spirit  of  fair  play  and 


72  SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES 

cooperation.  The  secrecy  and  self-seeking 
of  partisan  politics  must  be  overborne  by  an 
open-minded  sense  of  justice  and  of  concerted 
effort  for  the  larger  well-being  of  all  the  na- 
tions. The  school  must  be  made  to  realize 
yet  more  profoundly  the  moral  imperative  of 
translating  knowledge  into  action  and  of  in- 
terpreting life  afresh  in  terms  of  abiding 
worth.  And  "religion  itself  must  be  recov- 
ered from  the  bondage  of  unproved  dogma 
and  of  unattractive  ritual  to  be  established 
in  the  freedom  of  the  faith,  in  the  winsome- 
ness  of  a  finer  form  of  goodness,  and  in  the 
larger  efficiency  of  a  united  strength." 

There  are  mountains  of  obstacles  to  be 
overcome  in  realizing  these  great  ideals.  Just 
so  1  But  it  is  the  high  office  of  faith  to  move 
mountains.  Faith  can  stand  up  and  say, 
"Fear  not,  only  believe!"  Believe  in  your- 
self and  in  the  sincerity  of  your  own  pur- 
poses. If  you  cannot  do  that  without  flinch- 
ing, then  put  yourself  right  so  that  you  can ! 
Believe  in  your  fellows — it  may  easily  be  that 
many  of  them,  perhaps  most  of  them,  are  as 
good  as  you  are.  Believe  in  God  who  is  above 
all  and  through  all  and  in  us  all.  And  in  that 
high  faith  go  forth  and  win. 

The  man  of  God,  whether  he  be  lay  or 
clerical,  has  a  great  opportunity  in  this  day 


SOCIAL   BEBUILDEES  73 

of  social  agitation  and  unrest.  Let  him  be  a 
man  of  principle  and  of  conviction,  let  him  be 
a  man  sure  of  his  facts  and  possessed  of  an 
honest  sympathy  for  all  who  suifer  from 
social  injustice,  and  he  too  will  find  his  work 
cut  out  and  ready  for  him.  It  is  for  the 
church  of  Jesus  Christ  to  make  it  plain  be- 
yond a  peradventure  that  if  a  man  stands  for 
commercial  and  industrial  methods  which 
mean  injustice  and  oppression,  the  mere  ac- 
ceptance of  a  sound  theology,  or  a  more 
scrupulous  attention  to  the  forms  of  religion, 
will  not  suffice  to  save  him  from  the  conse- 
quences of  that  wrongdoing.  It  is  for  the 
church  to  make  it  clear  that  showy  gifts  to 
charity  and  large  schemes  of  benevolence 
made  possible  by  gains  gotten  in  immoral 
ways  will  not  atone  for  acts  of  social  injus- 
tice. It  is  for  every  man  to  get  his  money  as 
well  as  to  give  it  away  according  to  methods 
which  the  Almighty  can  approve. 

When  I  was  a  pastor  in  California  there 
was  an  outlook  from  the  belfry  of  my  church 
which  was  most  suggestive.  I  could  enter 
that  church  steeple  and  look  -straight  out 
through  the  Golden  Gate  upon  the  world's 
widest  sea.  I  could  see  coming  in  the  great 
ocean  liners  of  the  Pacific  Mail,  the  Korea, 
the  Siberia,  the  Manchuria,  and  the  Mongolia, 


74  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

their  very  names  suggestive  of  our  points  of 
contact  across  the  water.  I  knew  that  deep 
down  in  the  holds  of  those  ships  there  were 
the  teas  and  the  silks,  the  teakwood  and  the 
lacquer  and  all  the  other  treasures  of  the 
Orient  sent  hither  to  enrich  and  to  adorn  our 
American  life. 

Through  the  port  holes  of  the  steerage  of 
those  ships  I  could  sometimes  see  strange 
faces  and  hear  the  murmur  of  alien  tongues. 
I  could  see  men  and  women  coming  hither 
to  better  their  condition  in  this  land  of  oppor- 
tunity. And  behind  those  who  actually  came, 
I  could  see  across  that  widest  of  all  our 
oceans  a  multitude  of  beseeching  faces  like 
those  mystic  faces  which  make  up  the  back- 
ground of  Raphael's  Sistine  Madonna  in  the 
gallery  at  Dresden.  They  too  were  looking 
this  way.  They  were  looking  in  through  the 
Golden  Gate  at  my  church  steeple.  They 
were  looking  toward  this  Christian  civiliza- 
tion of  ours  as  if  dimly  conscious  that  we  had 
here  discovered  a  source  of  divine  help  to 
which  their  imperfect  faith  was  a  stranger. 

The  moral  appeal  which  all  that  made  to 
me  was  tremendous.  And  I  feel  sure  at  this 
hour  that  all  of  those  men  and  women  who 
suffer  hurt  and  wrong  here  in  our  own  broad 
land  at  the  hands  of  an  unjust  social  system 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  75 

are  in  similar  fashion  looking  up  at  all  the 
church  steeples  with  an  unvoiced  appeal  in 
their  hearts.  And  they  will  not  acquit  us  of 
our  responsibility  unless  we  are  bent  upon 
delivering  to  them  in  more  generous  measure 
all  those  higher  elements  of  our  Christian 
civilization  which  are  made  possible  to  us 
through  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ.  They 
are  making  their  steady  appeal  to  the  spirit- 
ual forces,  symbolized  by  those  church 
steeples,  for  aid  of  a  higher  sort  in  the  solu- 
tion of  these  vexing  problems  of  industrial 
life. 

Personally,  I  do  not  believe  that  their  de- 
liverance will  come  by  any  sort  of  social  revo- 
lution. I  do  not  believe  that  the  advance  of 
social  sympathy  and  the  more  complete  ex- 
pression of  that  sympathy  in  better  institu- 
tions and  in  a  more  finely  organized  life  will 
mean  that  private  ownership  of  the  means  of 
production  will  entirely  disappear  as  the 
socialists  desire,  or  that  such  private  owner- 
ship ought  to  disappear.  I  do  not  believe 
that  all  competition  will  cease  or  that  it  could 
entirely  cease  without  a  resultant  loss  of  in- 
centive to  effort  which  we  are  not  ready  to 
incur.  I  do  not  believe  that  superior  per- 
sonal endowment  and  untiring  industry  will 
cease  to  command  a  reward  altogether  excep- 


76  SOCIAL  EEBUILDERS 

tional — I  think  that  it  is  altogether  best  that 
they  should  continue  to  command  such  a  re- 
ward. The  exceptional  rewards  now  held  out 
to  such  ability  put  a  premium  upon  and  effec- 
tively stimulate  the  production  and  develop- 
ment of  those  useful  qualities  in  the  lives  of 
many  who  might  not  show  themselves  equally 
responsive  to  any  other  form  of  motive. 

In  the  judgment  of  many  there  is  need  that 
certain  elements  in  our  social  order  should  be 
more  strongly  championed  at  this  time. 
1  'There  is,"  as  Theodore  S.  Woolsey  has  said, 
"a  world-wide  attack  upon  the  rights  of  pri- 
vate property  taking  shape  in  a  variety  of 
forms  from  the  blatant  doings  of  Bolshevism 
to  the  subtler  theories  of  national  ownership 
and  of  the  taxation  of  the  savings  of  the 
thrifty  out  of  existence  which,  if  successful, 
will  remove  the  principal  incentive  to  labor. 
The  basis  of  civilization  is  not  humanitarian- 
ism;  it  is  the  maintenance  of  personal  and 
property  rights  by  a  system  of  self-imposed 
law." 

All  this  too  I  steadfastly  believe,  but  I  hold 
none  the  less  that  by  the  ever-widening  sway 
and  rule  of  the  spirit  of  Christ  all  these 
kingdoms  of  business  and  of  politics,  of  edu- 
cation and  of  recreation,  of  home  life  and 
social  life,  must  become  kingdoms  of  our 


SOCIAL   REBUILDEES  77 

Lord  in  the  sense  that  they  shall  steadily  and 
consistently  express  his  method  and  spirit. 
How  tremendously  it  would  strengthen  our 
confidence  in  the  moral  supremacy  of  Chris- 
tianity as  we  send  forth  our  representatives 
to  those  non-Christian  nations  were  we  here 
at  home  wise  enough,  strong  enough,  and 
good  enough  to  make  our  own  nation  more 
truly  Christian!  How  magnificent  would  be 
the  moral  challenge  and  the  spiritual  appeal 
we  could  make  did  our  missionaries  go  forth 
from  a  nation  of  free  men  organized  and 
working  together  in  that  spirit  of  intelligent 
good  will  which  is  the  very  essence  of  the 
Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ !  We  can  never  stand 
right  with  the  God  of  all  the  higher  values,  or 
right  in  the  eyes  of  the  outer  world,  or  right 
in  our  own  eyes  until  we  are  striving  reso- 
lutely to  make  this  total  life  of  ours  like  a 
holy  city  descending  out  of  the  realm  of 
vision  and  dream  into  the  realm  of  accom- 
plished fact,  a  holy  city  where  God  himself 
shall  dwell  and  reign  forever  and  ever. 


CHAPTER  in 

THE  HEEDSMAN  WHO  PREACHED 
SOCIAL  JUSTICE 

MY  whole  approach  to  these  industrial 
problems  is  naturally  sympathetic.  My 
father  was  a  workingman — he  worked  all  his 
life  with  his  hands.  He  was  a  farmer  in  the 
Middle  West.  He  brought  up  his  children  to 
work  with  their  hands.  There  is  no  sort  of 
farm  work,  from  the  turning  of  the  first  fur- 
row in  the  spring  to  the  gathering  in  of  the 
last  nubbin  of  corn  in  the  fall  which  I  have 
not  done,  day  in  and  day  out,  week  in  and 
week  out.  I  have  come  in  many  a  time  from 
the  field  at  night  so  tired  that  I  scarcely  cared 
to  eat  my  supper — I  only  wanted  to  tumble 
into  bed  to  get  the  rest  needed  for  the  next 
day 's  work. 

Therefore,  when  I  see  a  group  of  working- 
men  coming  out  of  a  mill  or  a  mine  or  a  fac- 
tory, weary  and  depleted  at  the  end  of  the 
day's  toil,  I  know  precisely  how  they  feel. 
When  I  hear  them  talk  about  bettering  their 
condition,  it  is  no  academic  question  for  me— 
I  feel  it  in  my  bones  and  in  my  flesh  which 

78 


SOCIAL   KEBUILDERS  79 

have  been  wearied  by  the  same  sort  of  expe- 
rience which  they  are  undergoing  now. 

This  man  whose  words  we  are  to  study  in 
this  lecture  made  his  approach  to  the  prob- 
lems of  his  day  by  the  same  direct  route.  He 
lived  with  his  feet  on  the  bare  ground  even 
when  his  head  was  among  the  stars.  He  was 
not  clothed  in  soft  raiment — he  came,  like  his 
successor  in  the  time  of  Christ,  rough  in  dress 
and  rude  in  manner.  He  was  emphatically 
an  outdoor  man  with  the  smell  of  the  soil  in 
his  garments  and  the  accents  of  farm  life  in 
his  rugged  speech.  He  was  one  of  those 
homely,  weather-beaten  people  who  make  po- 
tent appeal  to  us  all. 

The  word  of  the  Lord  as  it  fell  from  his 
lips  was  a  word  with  the  bark  on  it.  He  was 
not  a  Matthew  Arnold  discoursing  about 
" sweetness  and  light,"  with  a  polite  scorn  for 
the  ways  of  the  unwashed.  He  was  a  Thomas 
Carlyle,  with  a  bite  in  his  tongue  and  a  hot 
hatred  in  his  heart  for  all  manner  of  sham. 
He  was  no  reed  shaken  with  the  wind — he 
was  built  out  of  quartered  oak. 

He  was  once  accused  of  preaching  for  the 
money  there  was  in  it.  He  scorned  the  impu- 
tation. "No  prophet  am  I"  (in  the  profes- 
sional sense  he  meant),  "nor  prophet's  son. 
I  am  a  herdsman  from  Tekoa  and  a  dresser 


80  SOCIAL   EEBUILDEBS 

of  sycamore  trees. ' '  He  kept  a  few  sheep  on 
his  meager  farm  and  had  a  grove  of  sycamore 
trees,  which  were  not  like  our  sycamores — 
they  bore  a  weak  and  watery  sort  of  fig  which 
was  eaten  only  by  the  very  poor. 

He  lived  six  miles  south  of  Bethlehem,  at  a 
place  called  Tekoa.  The  region  is  as  hilly 
as  New  Hampshire  and  about  twice  as  rocky. 
It  was  said  that  the  shepherds  of  Tekoa  had 
to  sharpen  the  noses  of  their  sheep  to  enable 
them  to  get  down  between  the  stones  and  nip 
the  green  grass.  It  was  a  rugged,  meager 
sort  of  life  which  this  man  had  lived,  and  we 
can  understand  his  instant  hearty  sympathy 
with  all  the  struggling  people  of  his  day.  He 
had  eaten  the  hard  fare  of  ill-paid  labor. 

He  was  what  the  "safe-and-sane"  people — 
which  often  means  people  who  have  been 
dead  for  some  time  but  are  still  going  about 
in  order  to  save  funeral  expenses — would 
have  called  "an  agitator."  Amos  was  once 
asked  in  peremptory  fashion  to  leave  the 
country  for  fear  his  words  might  stir  up  the 
oppressed  poor  to  revolt  against  their  lords 
and  masters.  He  told  his  critics  that  he  was 
constrained  to  stay  right  there  on  his  job. 
The  word  of  the  Lord  had  come  to  him  and 
speak  he  must.  "The  word  of  the  Lord,"  as 
they  used  the  phrase,  did  not  mean  a  book.  It 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  81 

was  the  phrase  by  which  those  early  Hebrews 
simply  and  accurately  described  one  of  those 
commanding  moral  impulses  which  they  be- 
lieved to  be  divine  in  its  origin  and  impera- 
tive in  its  moral  authority.  * '  The  Lord  hath 
spoken;  who  can  but  prophesy?" 

Amos  saw  the  rapid  increase  of  wealth  in 
his  day  and  he  knew  that  to  the  souls  of  many 
it  was  a  menace.  He  saw  luxurious  buildings 
given  over  to  self-indulgence.  He  saw  the 
gorgeous  ritual  employed  in  worship  which 
had  become  more  costly  than  holy.  He  saw 
the  contempt  of  the  well-to-do  for  the  strug- 
gling poor.  And  he  felt  that  all  this  was 
wrong.  He  believed  that  it  was  an  offense  to 
Him  who  is  no  respecter  of  persons,  but  cares 
alike  for  us  all. 

Amos  believed  in  one  God,  a  God  of  right- 
eousness, a  God  who  was  interested  in  the 
political  and  commercial  affairs  of  men.  He 
believed  that  the  Hebrew  nation  had  been 
chosen  of  God,  not  for  favoritism  but  for 
service  and  that  the  bond  between  the  Hebrew 
people  and  their  Maker  was  a  moral  bond. 
And  because  he  believed  all  this  he  felt  that 
they  were  endangering  their  standing  before 
him  and  their  usefulness  among  the  nations 
of  the  earth  by  their  mode  of  life.  He  there- 
fore sought  to  recall  them  from  their  thought- 


82  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

less  extravagance  and  showy  self -indulgence 
to  more  worthy  action. 

He  represented  the  Deity  he  worshiped  as 
being  merciful  and  gracious,  slow  to  anger 
and  plenteous  in  mercy.  God  had  been  pa- 
tient beyond  measure  with  those  disobedient 
people,  but  now  the  time  had  come  for  judg- 
ment and  correction.  "For  three  transgres- 
sions and  for  four  I  will  not  turn  away  the 
punishment  of  Judah.  For  three  transgres- 
sions and  for  four  I  will  not  turn  away  the 
punishment  of  Israel.  For  three  transgres- 
sions and  for  four  I  will  not  turn  away  the 
punishment  of  Damascus."  Over  and  over 
again  he  repeats  that  phrase,  "For  three 
transgressions  and  for  four." 

It  was  not  for  some  single  act  of  wrong- 
doing prompted  perchance  by  passion  or  by 
sudden  temper.  It  was  for  their  repeated  and 
cumulative  acts  of  evil  that  they  were  be- 
ing arraigned  from  on  high.  ' '  You  have  done 
wrong  and  you  have  done  it  again  and  again 
and  again,"  the  prophet  seemed  to  say.  You 
have  persisted  in  modes  of  life  which  you 
knew  were  out  of  line  with  the  will  of  God— 
"For  three  transgressions  and  for  four" 
therefore  the  day  of  the  Lord  is  come  when 
you  will  be  judged  according  to  those  deeds 
done  in  the  body. 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  83 

He  rebuked  the  people  at  these  three  points. 
First,  he  denounced  them  for  their  showy, 
useless  extravagance.  They  had  their  "  win- 
ter houses ' '  and  their  * '  summer  houses ' '  and 
their  " palaces  of  ivory."  They  "stretched 
themselves  upon  couches"  and  "ate  lambs 
from  the  flock  and  fatted  calves  from  the 
midst  of  the  stall."  They  "drank  their  wine 
in  huge  bowls"  and  "anointed  themselves" 
with  costly  perfumes.  And  all  this  at  a  time 
when  many  of  the  poor  were  starving  and 
"the  righteous  were  being  sold  for  silver  and 
the  needy  for  a  pair  of  shoes."  It  was  the 
downright  heartlessness  and  inhumanity  of  it 
all  which  made  it  an  offense  in  the  sight  of 
God. 

Have  his  words  any  application  for  us? 
We  talk  about ' '  the  high  cost  of  living, '  '  and 
Heaven  knows  that  with  the  present  scale  of 
prices  it  is  not  easy  for  people  with  ordinary 
wages  or  fixed  salaries  to  make  both  ends 
meet.  But  go  to  the  places  where  the  lux- 
uries of  life  are  being  sold,  the  fur  coats  and 
the  diamonds  and  the  silk  underwear — are 
the  dealers  complaining  because  of  the  total 
lack  of  trade?  They  tell  us,  on  the  contrary, 
that  the  demand  was  never  so  keen  as  it  has 
been  in  the  last  two  or  three  years.  Go  to  the 
most  expensive  hotels  and  restaurants  in  our 


84  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

great  cities — are  they  all  empty?  They  are 
filled  at  almost  all  hours  of  the  day  and  night 
with  people  who  are  flinging  money  about  as 
if  it  were  of  no  more  worth  than  autumn 
leaves.  Go  to  the  high-priced  places  of 
amusement  and  recreation — are  they  for- 
saken! They  are  filled  to  the  doors  with  peo- 
ple who  seem  to  have  money  to  burn.  And 
all  this  at  a  time  when  other  people  are  starv- 
ing to  death  for  lack  of  food,  not  one  here  and 
one  there,  but  hundreds  of  thousands  of  them 
in  Armenia,  in  Syria,  in  Serbia,  in  Austria,  in 
Poland,  in  China,  and  in  well-nigh  half  the 
lands  of  the  earth.  Millions  for  luxury  and 
self-indulgence,  but  only  the  loose  change  to 
meet  the  needs  of  our  fellows  who  are  in 
want. 

I  sat  not  long  ago  in  the  dining  car  just 
across  from  a  young  fellow  who  looked  as  if 
he  might  have  come  from  some  expensive  pre- 
paratory school.  The  service  was  a  la  carte. 
He  would  order  one  dish  after  another,  eat  a 
little  of  it  perhaps  and  then  push  it  away 
to  order  something  else.  When  his  check  was 
brought  I  saw  the  amount — it  was  $3.90  for 
the  lunch.  He  flung  down  a  five-dollar  bill 
in  careless  fashion,  told  the  waiter  to  keep 
the  change,  and  walked  out  with  his  chin  up 
and  a  cigarette  in  his  mouth. 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEBS  85 

I  do  not  suppose  that  the  young  chap  had 
ever  earned  a  dollar  in  his  life,  or  that  he  is 
likely  to  earn  a  dollar  within  the  next  ten 
years,  perhaps  never.  He  was  eating  his 
bread  by  the  sweat  of  some  other  man's  brow, 
and  that  was  the  way  that  he  was  eating  it. 
And  all  this  at  a  time  when  the  stories  of 
want  and  pain,  of  disease  and  death,  which 
come  to  us  from  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe 
make  the  heart  of  every  decent  man  sick.  In 
these  grim  times  all  waste  is  crime  and  all 
needless,  senseless,  showy  luxury  is  a  close 
second.  If  that  young  fellow  as  he  walked 
out  of  the  dining  car  could  have  met  face  to 
face  one  of  those  starving  children  of  Eu- 
rope for  whom  Herbert  Hoover  has  been 
working  and  pleading,  the  appeal  of  want 
might  have  pierced  even  the  rhinoceros  hide 
of  his  moral  nature  and  have  awakened  some 
decent  response. 

The  showy,  extravagant  self-indulgence  is 
not  all  being  exhibited  by  the  very  rich- 
much  of  it  comes  from  the  "newly  rich"  and 
from  those  who  would  not  be  termed  rich  at 
all,  but  whose  heads  have  been  turned  by  the 
high  wages  paid  during  the  war  and  by  a 
scale  of  living  suddenly  advanced  out  of  all 
proportion  to  the  taste  and  judgment  of 
those  who  indulge  in  it.  Yet  in  the  face  of 


86  SOCIAL   KEBUILDERS 

all  this  extravagant  expenditure  how  the 
churches  and  the  charities,  the  homes  and  the 
hospitals,  the  small  struggling  colleges,  and 
the  various  institutions  of  benevolence  have 
to  scheme  and  plan,  scrape  and  save,  in  order 
to  meet  their  needs!  "For  three  transgres- 
sions and  for  four,"  for  repeated  acts  of 
heartlessness  and  cruelty,  I  will  not  turn 
away  your  punishment,  saith  the  Lord  of 
Hosts. 

In  the  second  place,  the  prophet  denounced 
the  people  for  their  careless  treatment  of  the 
weak.  "  Ye  have  sold  the  righteous  for  silver 
and  the  needy  for  a  song."  In  their  eager- 
ness to  monopolize  the  land  he  pictured  them 
as  panting  for  the  very  dust  of  the  ground 
upon  the  heads  of  the  poor.  They  had  tam- 
pered with  the  weights  and  measures  used  in 
business  that  they  might  add  to  their  profits 
—"Ye  have  made  the  ephah  small  and  the 
shekel  great."  They  were  "profiteers"  of 
the  thirty- third  and  last  degree  before  that 
word  had  been  coined.  They  were  intent  on 
piling  on  all  that  the  traffic  would  bear.  They 
bought  in  the  cheapest  market  and  sold  in  the 
dearest,  regardless  of  the  effect  of  their 
action  upon  the  lives  of  the  people.  They 
hired  men  for  the  least  they  could  be  induced 
by  their  necessities  to  take,  with  no  thought 


SOCIAL  EEBUILDERS  87 

of  the  social  consequences  of  all  this  upon 
lives  which  were  equally  precious  with  their 
own  in  the  eyes  of  God.  All  this  had  pro- 
duced a  hard  and  callous  contempt  for  hu- 
man values,  a  wretched  scorn  for  the  weak, 
and  a  flat  indifference  to  the  social  implica- 
tions of  their  mode  of  life. 

This  prophet  of  old  had  come  from  the  edge 
of  the  desert  where  there  was  plain  living 
and  high  thinking.  He  had  seen  the  strug- 
gles of  the  poorer  elements  of  society  to 
maintain  themselves,  and  he  felt  for  them. 
He  had  lived  in  that  very  region  where  our 
Lord  was  tempted  when  he  was  led  into  the 
wilderness  with  the  wild  beasts  to  be  tried 
out.  You  can  hear  a  note  of  reminiscence  in 
those  words  of  Amos  where  he  says  it  is  as  if 
a  man  "did  flee  from  a  lion,  and  a  bear  met 
him;  or  went  into  a  house,  and  leaned  his 
hand  on  the  wall,  and  a  serpent  bit  him." 
The  prophet  had  been  compelled  to  live 
simply  and  dangerously,  and  now  this  flat, 
contemptuous  disregard  for  the  weak  and 
struggling  by  the  more  fortunate  of  earth 
filled  his  soul  with  wrath. 

Here,  again,  shall  not  our  own  land,  strong, 
brave,  prosperous  in  so  many  sections  of  its 
life,  take  heed?  The  working  people  of  the 
world  are  not  all  in  the  powerful  labor  unions 


88  SOCIAL   REBUILDEES 

where  labor  has  become  class  conscious  and 
the  workingmen  are  upon  their  feet  able  to 
bargain  collectively  with  their  employers  on 
comparatively  equal  terms.  The  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  plain  working  people  who  are 
not  thus  placed  come  in  for  our  consideration. 
"Take  heed,"  the  Master  said,  "lest  ye  cause 
one  of  these  little  ones  to  stumble."  They 
may  or  may  not  be  little  in  physical  stature, 
but  they  are  little  in  opportunity,  in  resource, 
in  the  power  of  initiative,  in  trained  intelli- 
gence, and  in  ability  to  carve  for  themselves 
at  the  big,  long  table  where  so  many  stronger 
men  with  longer  arms  are  reaching  for  the 
choicest  bits.  Take  heed  that  ye  cause  not 
one  of  these  weaker  ones  to  stumble  and  fall 
— it  were  better  for  a  man  to  have  a  millstone 
tied  about  his  neck  and  be  cast  into  the  midst 
of  the  sea.  The  Master  would  have  us  show 
nothing  less  than  a  chivalrous  concern  for  the 
less  fortunate  of  the  earth. 

Look  upon  this  picture  of  Gary,  the  seat 
of  a  great  steel  industry,  as  drawn  in  lines 
that  live  and  move  and  speak,  by  the  hand  of 
Ray  Stannard  Baker: 

"I  went  down  to  the  city  of  Gary  in  a  snow 
storm,  with  a  cold,  raw  wind  blowing  off  the 
Illinois  prairies.  The  train  was  cold  and  the 
city  I  had  left  behind  was  cold.  I  was  going 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES  89 

from  a  city  suffering  from  a  coal  strike  to  a 
city  suffering  from  a  steel  strike. 

"As  I  saw  it  at  dusk  on  that  December  day 
Gary  seemed  a  kind  of  Titan,  dwarfing  all 
the  life  around  and  within  it.  So  few  men 
were  seen,  so  dim  and  insignificant  they  were 
compared  with  the  stupendous  machinery, 
that  one  scarcely  noticed  them !  The  mechan- 
ism seemed  to  be  operating  itself.  There  it 
was,  a  kind  of  monster  squatting  on  the  shore 
of  the  gray  lake!  A  tireless  monster  that 
never  sleeps,  regardless  of  disputatious  work- 
ers, and  capitalists  and  economists  and  poli- 
ticians, toiling  day  and  night,  winter  and 
summer,  Sundays,  Christmas,  the  Fourth  of 
July!  Thousands  of  men  digging  for  their 
lives  in  the  mines  of  Minnesota  and  in  the 
coal  fields  and  quarries  of  Indiana  and  Illi- 
nois can  scarcely  keep  it  satisfied !  I  felt  the 
implacable  power  of  the  mechanism  and  in 
comparison  the  insignificance  of  the  human 
element  in  the  process. 

' '  It  came  to  me  that  in  its  essence  mankind 
was  there  facing  the  problem  whether  ma- 
chinery should  dominate  men  or  men  machin- 
ery. Were  men  to  be  merely  cogs  or  servants 
of  insensate  mechanisms  or  were  they  to 
stand  out  as  masters  using  easily  and  freely 
the  tools  they  had  built?  Was  the  'genius  of 


90  SOCIAL   KEBUILDEES 

mechanism,'  as  Carlyle  expressed  it,  to  sit 
forever  'like  an  incubus  upon  the  soul  of 
man,'  or  was  the  soul  of  man  to  free  itself 
and  command  the  genius  of  mechanism?"1 
And  this  is  the  problem  everywhere.  Are 
the  human  values  to  go  down  in  defeat  before 
the  mechanical  process  of  producing  material 
values  or  is  the  huge,  hard  process  of  pro- 
duction, manufacture,  transportation,  and  ex- 
change to  be  made  to  serve  the  human? 

"Ill  fares  the  land,  to  hastening  Ills  a  prey. 
Where  wealth  accumulates,  and  men  decay." 

A  man's  life  or  a  nation's  life  consists  not  in 
the  abundance  of  the  things  that  can  be  pro- 
duced and  owned.  The  human  rather  than 
the  material  must  be  the  final  arbiter  when 
the  system  comes  up  for  judgment.  It  was 
said  in  Massachusetts  that  William  L.  Doug- 
las was  elected  governor  of  the  old  Common- 
wealth because  he  had  shown  that  he  could 
make  shoes  and  money  and  men  all  at  once 
and  in  the  same  factory.  The  industry  which 
does  not  make  manhood  as  well  as  money 
stands  condemned.  Take  heed  then,  0  mas- 
ters of  industry,  that  you  cause  not  one  of  the 
least  of  these  human  beings  bound  up  in  your 


'From  The  New  Industrial  Unrest,  by  Ray  Stannard  Baker,  published 
by  Doubleday,  Page  &  Company. 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES  91 

huge  enterprise  to  perish  in  the  worthier  and 
more  enduring  elements  of  his  life ! 

The  fate  of  any  civilization  is  in  the  last 
analysis  a  moral  question.  What  do  the  peo- 
ple care  most  about?  What  lines  of  interest 
and  of  action  command  the  largest  share  of 
their  time,  their  thought,  and  their  enthusi- 
asm? We  all  know  how  and  why  Eome  went 
to  the  wall.  The  Coliseum  had  crowded  out 
the  Forum.  The  "place  of  games,  of  spec- 
tacles and  of  cruel,  debasing  forms  of  amuse- 
ment had  crowded  out  the  place  for  the 
serious  public  discussion  of  those  principles 
of  social  and  political  well-being  which  make 
a  nation  strong. 

When  the  Eoman  people  had  given  them- 
selves over  to  those  easy,  lazy  habits  of 
luxury  and  self-indulgence  for  a  generation 
or  two,  they  found  that  the  moral  fiber  of  the 
empire  had  been  largely  eaten  away.  And 
when  that  mode  of  life  had  been  followed 
for  a  century  or  two,  they  found  themselves 
unable  to  stand  up  against  the  enemies  who 
came  down  from  the  north.  May  God  in  his 
mercy  save  us  here  in  America  from  becom- 
ing amusement  mad  and  dance  crazy,  from 
being  given  over  mainly  to  the  pursuit  of 
material  things  and  to  costly  habits  of  self- 
indulgence  !  We  would  stand  condemned  be- 


92  SOCIAL  KEBUILDERS 

fore  the  ages  were  we  thus  to  defeat  the  high 
ends  for  which  the  Republic  was  founded  by 
our  plain-living,  God-fearing  forefathers. 

Why  should  there  not  be  an  "Open 
Forum"  in  every  high  school  building  in 
every  city  of  the  land  for  the  stated  and 
repeated  discussion  of  those  industrial  meth- 
ods and  political  principles  which  have  to  do 
with  the  common  good?  To  what  better  use 
could  those  splendid  structures,  which  now 
stand  so  often  dark  and  tenantless  through 
the  fateful  evening  hours,  be  devoted?  There 
are  many  who  maintain  that  were  the  oppor- 
tunity offered,  there  would  be  no  adequate 
response  from  the  people  who  still  suffer  hurt 
and  loss  because  they  have  not  been  trained 
to  think  clearly  and  steadily  upon  the  deeper 
issues  of  life.  But  personally  I  have  not  so 
poor  an  opinion  of  my  fellow  citizens  as  to 
believe  that  if  the  proposal  had  a  fair  trial 
for  a  series  of  years,  these  wretched  bed- 
room farces  and  the  superficial  sort  of  amuse- 
ment offered  in  the  movies  could  compete 
successfully  every  night  in  the  week  with 
those  places  where  grown-up  people  would  be 
asked  to  think  upon  the  things  which  belong 
to  their  peace. 

You  may  remember  that  "In  an  Open 
Forum  held  on  a  certain  Sunday  many  cen- 


SOCIAL  EEBUILDEES  93 

turies  ago  in  the  village  of  Nazareth  where 
laymen  were  permitted  to  speak,  a  young  car- 
penter gave  an  address  on  social  and  eco- 
nomic justice."  He  took  his  cue  from  a  well- 
known  bit  of  literature  current  among  the 
people  of  his  race,  and  in  substance  this  is 
what  he  said : ' '  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon 
me,  because  he  anointed  me  to  preach  good 
tidings  to  the  poor :  he  hath  sent  me  to  bind  up 
the  broken-hearted,  to  preach  deliverance  to 
the  captives,  to  set  at  liberty  them  that  are 
bruised,  and  to  proclaim  the  acceptable  year 
of  the  Lord." 

His  address  brought  a  coldness  over  the 
meeting,  we  are  told,  and  at  the  close  of  the 
exercises  the  "safe-and-sane"  opponents  of 
all  such  radical  utterances  were  full  of  wrath. 
They  *  *  rose  up,  and  thrust  him  out  of  the  city, 
and  led  him  unto  the  brow  of  a  hill  .  .  . 
that  they  might  cast  him  down  headlong." 
But  by  the  strange  power  of  his  own  person- 
ality he  passed  through  their  midst  unhurt  and 
went  his  way.  He  moved  on  to  Capernaum,  a 
still  larger  city,  where  he  said  it  all  over 
again,  and  the  people  were  astonished  at  his 
teaching,  for  his  word  was  with  power.  He 
has  come  on  down  through  the  centuries  with 
the  same  social  message.  He  is  standing  to- 
day in  the  place  of  free  speech  "insisting  in 


94  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

the  same  intrepid  way  that  his  Father's 
world  shall  not  be  made  a  place  of  merchan- 
dise, but  a  place  where  plain  men  and  women 
may  live  and  grow  into  the  likeness  and 
image  of  the  Most  High." 

The  Master  had  been  fed  upon  sentiments  of 
social  justice  and  of  genuine  democracy  along 
with  his  mother's  milk.  Luke,  the  physician 
and  intimate  friend  perhaps  of  Mary  herself, 
has  preserved  for  us  one  of  those  ancient 
cradle  songs  which  may  well  have  refreshed 
the  soul  of  the  mother  and  filled  the  heart  of 
the  growing  child  with  the  sacred  music  of  a 
better  world. 

"My  soul  doth  magnify  the  Lord,  and  my 
spirit  hath  rejoiced  in  God  my  Saviour.  For 
he  hath  regarded  the  low  estate  of  his  hand- 
maiden :  for,  behold,  from  henceforth  all  gen- 
erations shall  call  me  blessed.  For  he  that 
is  mighty  hath  done  to  me  great  things ;  and 
holy  is  his  name.  And  his  mercy  is  on  them 
that  fear  him  from  generation  to  generation. 
He  hath  shewed  strength  with  his  arm;  he 
hath  scattered  the  proud  in  the  imagination 
of  their  hearts.  He  hath  put  down  the  mighty 
from  their  seats,  and  exalted  them  of  low 
degree.  He  hath  filled  the  hungry  with  good 
things ;  and  the  rich  he  hath  sent  empty  away. 
He  hath  helped  his  servant  Israel,  in  remem- 


95 

branee  of  his  mercy;  as  he  spake  to  our 
fathers,  to  Abraham  and  to  his  children,  for- 
ever." Reared  in  such  an  atmosphere  and 
with  these  words  of  social  regeneration 
sounding  in  his  ears,  we  cannot  wonder  that 
he  became  in  due  time  the  Friend  and  Cham- 
pion of  the  common  people  who  heard  him 
gladly. 

In  the  third  place,  the  prophet  Amos  ar- 
raigned the  people  of  his  day  for  their  infi- 
delity to  the  obligations  created  by  high 
privilege.  Israel  was  a  chosen  people,  chosen 
not  for  favoritism  but  for  an  exalted  and  an 
exacting  service.  Chosen  because  of  some 
unusual  capacity  for  moral  insight  and  for 
spiritual  leadership  to  take  the  right  of  the 
line  in  the  religious  advance  of  the  whole 
world!  "You  only  have  I  known  of  all  the 
families  of  the  earth, ' '  Amos  here  represents 
the  Lord  as  saying  to  them.  "You  only  have 
I  known,  therefore  will  I  punish  you  for  your 
iniquities."  You  are  a  privileged  people, 
richly  and  gloriously  privileged,  therefore 
you  are  the  more  heavily  and  capably  respon- 
sible for  the  well-being  of  the  race.  And  if 
you  turn  aside  and  deny  your  high  estate,  I 
will  punish  you  the  more  severely. 

When  Booker  T.  Washington  was  at 
Tuskegee  he  used  to  say  to  the  dusky-faced 


96  SOCIAL   KEBUILDERS 

students  gathered  there — and  I  have  heard 
him  say  it — "You  have  not  been  brought  here 
to  Tuskegee  to  be  trained  so  that  you  might 
go  back  and  compete  more  successfully  with 
your  untrained  fellows,  earning  larger  wages 
than  they  are  able  to  earn.  You  have  not 
been  brought  here  to  be  trained  so  that  you 
might  go  back  and  establish  better  homes 
and  finer  social  standards  than  those  to  be 
found  to-day  among  your  unprivileged  neigh- 
bors. You  have  been  brought  here  to  Tuske- 
gee to  be  trained  so  that  you  may  in  due  time 
become  more  heavily  and  capably  responsible 
for  the  welfare  of  your  race."  If  that  sort 
of  thing  can  be  said  and  done  in  the  green 
tree  of  a  black  man's  school,  what  have  we  a 
right  to  expect  in  the  more  seasoned  timber 
of  every  white  man's  college  in  the  land? 

The  possession  of  privilege  carries  with  it 
a  deposit  of  obligation  upon  which  the  whole 
community  has  the  right  to  draw.  Therefore 
the  first  thing  which  Amos  undertook  to  do 
was  to  dynamite  the  feeling  of  moral  com- 
placency and  smug  contentment  out  of  those 
Israelites.  Their  placid  self-satisfaction  was 
blocking  the  way  of  advance.  "Woe  to  them 
that  are  at  ease  in  Zion,  and  to  them  that  are 
secure  in  the  mountains  of  Samaria."  He 
would  have  them  keenly  and  steadily  con- 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS  97 

scious  of  the  responsibilities  which  the  divine 
bounty  had  laid  upon  them  in  their  better 
moral  estate. 

You  will  find  a  host  of  people  in  this  world 
who  are  accustomed  to  measure  themselves 
by  what  is  being  done  for  them  rather  than 
by  what  they  can  do  for  others.  They  seem 
to  think  that  because  they  live  on  the  best 
streets  and  are  well-dressed;  because  they 
fare  sumptuously  every  day  and  ride  to  and 
fro  in  high-priced  motor  cars;  because  they 
have  social  position  and  opportunities  in 
abundance  for  training  and  culture,  they  must 
of  necessity  be  people  of  significance.  They 
have  not  learned  as  yet  that  "Happiness," 
as  some  one  has  said,  "does  not  consist  in 
being  able  to  sit  down  and  order  what  you 
want  and  have  somebody  bring  it  to  you — 
happiness  is  going  after  something  yourself 
and  feeling  anxious  about  it  and  finally  get- 
ting it." 

But  these  short-sighted  people  measure 
themselves  by  what  is  being  done  for  them 
rather  than  by  their  ability  to  make  some 
proper  return  for  all  that  in  useful,  compe- 
tent, unselfish  action.  "By  their  fruits"  we 
are  to  judge  men — by  what  all  these  advan- 
tages of  theirs  produce  in  meeting  the  needs 
of  the  world,  by  what  they  are  able  to  give 


98  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

off  and  to  give  up  for  the  service  of  the  higher 
welfare  of  the  various  communities  where 
they  stand. 

In  our  estimate  of  goodness  it  is  the  posi- 
tive rather  than  the  negative  qualities  which 
are  to  be  emphasized.  It  is  what  a  man  does 
rather  than  what  he  refrains  from  doing 
which  makes  him  good.  You  will  sometimes 
hear  it  said  of  some  elderly  saint  who  has 
just  gone  to  his  reward :  ' '  Oh,  he  was  such  a 
good  man!  He  never  drank  and  he  never 
swore  and  he  never  smoked.  He  never  in- 
jured anyone,  and  I  never  heard  him  speak 
an  unkind  word  about  anybody  in  his  life.'* 
And  when  that  list  of  negative  virtues  is  com- 
plete you  have  in  your  mind  the  picture  of 
a  life  as  innocent  and  as  harmless  as  a  pan 
of  skimmed  milk. 

"But  what  did  he  do?"  you  are  moved  to 
ask.  How  far  did  he  make  his  life  count  for 
righteousness  in  politics  and  in  industry,  in 
securing  better  health  conditions  for  his  com- 
munity and  in  promoting  better  educational 
facilities,  in  making  his  church  a  power  for 
good  in  the  life  of  his  little  world?  If  he 
simply  refrained,  then  his  goodness  was  weak 
and  thin.  Let  every  life  be  judged  by  the 
positive  contribution  it  makes  to  the  general 
good  in  terms  of  useful  service. 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  99 

This  prophet  saw  the  Lord  standing  upon 
the  wall  of  the  city  with  a  plumbline  in  his 
hand.  *  *  Amos, ' '  he  cried,  * '  what  seest  thou  ? ' ' 
"A  plumbline,"  the  prophet  replied.  "Be- 
hold, I  will  set  a  plumbline  in  the  midst  of 
my  people  Israel, ' '  saith  the  Lord ;  "I  will  not 
again  pass  by  them  any  more. ' ' 

God  was  calling  upon  them  for  lives  of  in- 
tegrity, straight  up  and  down,  and  not  vari- 
able nor  crooked.  He  was  calling  upon  them 
for  a  social  order  built  by  the  square  and  by 
the  plumb,  so  that  the  power  of  gravitation 
and  the  other  elemental  forces  would  not  pull 
it  down.  "Seek  good  and  not  evil,"  he  cried, 
"that  ye  may  live:  Let  justice  run  down  as 
waters,  and  righteousness  as  a  mighty 
stream.  Then  the  Lord  of  hosts  will  be  gra- 
cious unto  you." 

The  stern  old  prophet's  morality  was  not 
based  on  shrewd  guesses  as  to  what  might 
turn  out  for  one's  immediate  advantage.  It 
did  not  rest  upon  expediency.  He  did  not  go 
about  saying,  "Honesty  is  the  best  policy," 
"Integrity  is  a  good  investment,"  "Trnth- 
telling  and  fair  dealing  are  more  likely  to  pay 
eight  per  cent  profit  than  the  opposite  quali- 
ties." His  morality  was  grounded  upon  the 
sense  of  agreement  between  the  principles  he 
taught  and  the  will  of  the  Almighty.  It  was 


100  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

grounded  in  the  great  moral  order  which  en- 
folds us  all,  whether  we  will  or  not.  He  there- 
fore called  upon  men  "to  meet  upon  the 
level  and  to  act  by  the  plumb  and  to  part 
upon  the  square.  So  may  men  ever  meet,  act, 
and  part. ' ' 

Here,  again,  we  may  well  apply  his  message 
to  modern  society  in  the  United  States  of 
America.  You  only  have  I  known  among  the 
nations  of  the  earth  in  the  bestowal  of  such 
abundant  resource  and  such  unique  oppor- 
tunities. Therefore  if  you  fail  in  your  duty, 
I  will  punish  you.  Why  may  we  not  in  all 
reverence  and  humility  apply  to  our  own  land 
those  very  words  which  Israel  applied  to  her- 
self when  she  was  chosen  of  God  for  a  high 
and  exacting  service? 

What  nation  hath  God  so  nigh  unto  them  as 
the  Lord  our  God  is  unto  us  in  all  things  that 
we  call  upon  him  for?  Has  God  ever  essayed 
to  take  him  a  nation  from  the  midst  of 
another  nation  by  signs,  by  wonders,  and 
by  war,  by  a  mighty  hand  and  an  outstretched 
arm,  as  the  Lord  our  God  has  done  for  us? 
Did  ever  people  hear  the  voice  of  God  speak- 
ing out  of  the  midst  of  the  fire  as  we  have 
heard?  What  nation  hath  statutes  and  judg- 
ments so  righteous  as  this  law  which  I  set  be- 
fore you  this  day?  Keep,  therefore,  and  do 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  101 

them,  for  this  shall  be  your  wisdom  and  your 
Understanding  among  the  nations.  "I  will 
bless  thee  and  thou  shalt  be  a  blessing.  I  will 
make  thee  a  great  nation,  and  in  thee  shall 
all  the  nations  of  the  world  be  blessed." 

"In  a  sense  that  never  has  been  true  before 
what  happens  in  America  happens  to  all  the 
world.  This  fact  brings  no  special  credit  to 
us.  It  1^  the  result  of  our  situation,  our  herit- 
age, our  unexhausted  resources,  and  our  re- 
cent emergence  from  our  traditional  isola- 
tion. This  new  importance  of  America  should 
issue  not  in  pride  but  in  humility.  But 
whether  it  be  faced  with  modest  serviceable- 
ness  or  with  boasting,  the  fact  remains,  as  an 
Englishman  has  recently  said,  'The  United 
States  of  America  is  the  greatest  potential 
force,  material,  moral,  and  spiritual,  in  the 
world.'  " 

It  is  for  us,  then,  to  see  to  it  that  this  high 
privilege  is  matched  by  the  frank  acceptance 
of  the  grave  responsibility  which  inevitably 
goes  with  it.  To  whom  much  is  given  of  them 
will  much  be  required.  We  are  to  develop 
and  maintain  that  high  quality  of  national 
soul  which  will  make  us  competent  to  meet 
the  demands  of  our  higih  estate. 

It  is  not  important  nor  desirable  that  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States  and  the  Ten 


102  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

Commandments  and  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  should  be  made  satisfactory  to  the  red- 
mouthed  agitators  and  red-handed  anarchists 
who  have  reacted  from  the  wicked  regimes 
in  Southeastern  Europe  into  treason  and 
violence.  It  is  not  desirable  that  the  great 
standards  of  political  and  moral  well-being 
wtyich  have  been  current  among  us  should  be 
toned  down  to  suit  the  whims  of  any  of  the 
enemies  of  social  order.  But  it  is  important 
that  all  these  leaders  of  unrest  should  be 
toned  up  and  called  upon  to  sing  their  songs 
of  aspiration  in  harmony  with  the  standards 
just  named.  The  "Great  Melting  Pot"  must 
melt  and  fuse,  it  must  refine  and  mold  all 
these  varied  elements  in  our  composite  life 
until  we  have  in  abundance  that  sort  of  metal 
in  our  political  and  industrial  activities  which 
will  bear  the  strain  now  being  put  upon  it. 

There  are  good  and  sufficient  reasons  for 
believing  that  the  undaunted  vigor  of  our 
American  idealism  may  show  itself  equal  to 
that  hard  task.  How  splendid  has  been  the 
quality  of  our  national  life  on  certain  august 
occasions  when  it  was  put  to  the  test  I  ' '  Here 
is  the  paradox  of  American  politics,"  a  wise 
Harvard  professor  once  said.  "The  same 
people  who  have  impressed  observers  as 
sharp  traders  and  keen  politicians  have  sur- 


SOCIAL   BEBUILDERS  103 

prised  the  world  by  acts  of  unprecedented 
magnanimity  and  self-denial.  What  other 
nation,  while  rejecting  the  principle  of  a 
state  church,  maintains  through  the  volun- 
tary gifts  of  its  population  such  vast  organi- 
zations for  worship,  as  if  to  testify  that  it  has 
not  only  territory  to  develop  and  products  to 
sell,  but  a  soul  to  save?  What  other  coun- 
try ever  received  an  indemnity  from  a  for- 
eign government"  (he  was  referring  to 
China)  "and  returned  it,  only  to  receive  it 
once  more  in  the  form  of  stipends  for  the  edu- 
cation of  youths  sent  to  the  United  States  by 
the  grateful  land?  When  did  another  nation 
win  territory  and  return  it  to  its  occupants, 
as  in  Cuba,  or  hold  it  in  trust,  as  in  the 
Philippines  ?  When  did  ever  another  nation 
at  the  end  of  a  war  like  that  with  Spain 
transport  the  defeated  army  to  their  homes 
across  the  sea  ?  When  did  ever  a  great  Power 
pause  with  such  scrupulousness  before  pun- 
ishing a  weaker  neighbor,  like  Mexico,  and 
meantime  provide  for  her  refugees  friendly 
shelter  and  support?  Or  when  did  any  other 
nation,  having  taken  possession  of  a  strip  of 
land  and  at  enormous  cost  built  a  canal,  ever 
propose  to  satisfy  its  conscience  by  a  volun- 
tary payment  to  the  former  owners,  or  to 
open  the  canal  on  equal  terms  to  the  fleets 


104  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

of  the  world?  Works  of  supererogation  like 
these  indicate  a  more  complex  type  of  char- 
acter than  a  nation  of  shopkeepers  could  pro- 
duce. Under  the  hardness  of  American  com- 
mercialism there  lies  a  richer  soil."1 

In  those  days  and  weeks  which  followed 
upon  the  signing  of  the  armistice  in  the  fall 
of  1918  how  full  and  strong  was  the  tide  of 
moral  idealism  running  at  Washington,  at 
London  and  at  Paris.  Men  felt  that  it  was 
morning  everywhere.  We  had  entered  upon 
the  dawn  of  a  new  day.  It  was  believed  that 
this  nation,  which  had  cast  in  its  strength  at 
the  eleventh  hour  in  such  measure  as  to  tip 
the  scales  toward  victory  for  those  principles 
which  we  esteemed  to  be  right,  would  now  aid 
in  securing  such  a  peace  settlement  as  the 
world  had  never  seen  at  the  close  of  any  great 
war. 

Then,  alas!  there  came  a  falling  away 
which  we  all  deplore,  a  moral  relaxation,  a 
lowering  of  tone,  a  return  to  the  old  material- 
istic ways  of  thinking  and  of  acting,  a  slack- 
ening of  purpose  and  a  cheapening  of  our 
ideals.  We  were  not  good  enough  to  live  up 
to  the  high  mood  which  possessed  the  soul  of 


'Reprinted  from  The  Christian  Life  in  the  Modern  World  (p.  183),  by 
Francis  G.  Feabody,  by  permission  of  the  publishers,  The  Macmillan 
Company. 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS  105 

the  nation  when  we  entered  the  war,  the  mood 
which  was  also  ours  when  the  victory  was 
won. 

The  government  at  Washington  saw  to  it 
that  we  were  "last  in  the  war."  When  the 
armistice  had  been  signed  and  when  the  treaty 
had  been  framed  at  Paris,  the  United  States 
Senate  seemed  determined  to  see  to  it  that 
we  should  be  * '  last  in  peace. ' '  We  ought  long 
ere  this  (I  am  writing  these  words  in  Febru- 
ary, 1921)  to  have  made  our  peace  with  Ger- 
many and  have  entered  with  the  other  nations 
into  some  reasonable  and  promising  agree- 
ment— I  put  it  simply  and  broadly  that  it  may 
include  all  forward  looking  minds — for  a  bet- 
ter method  of  settling  international  differ- 
ences as  they  may  arise.  Had  there  been  more 
statesmanship  and  less  partisan  politics  at 
both  ends  of  Pennsylvania  Avenue  in  Wash- 
ington, this  result  would  have  been  achieved. 
We  ought  to  have  made  more  progress  to- 
ward industrial  peace  and  prosperity,  toward 
a  more  even  spread  of  that  well-being  in 
which  all  are  meant  to  share.  Had  there  been 
a  larger  measure  of  social  justice,  a  more 
complete  respect  for  the  rights  of  the  other 
man  and  the  other  class,  and  a  more  insistent 
spirit  of  good  will,  we  would  also  have 
achieved  that.  We  ought  to  have  relieved 


106  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

more  of  the  distress  of  the  world  and  to  have 
aided  further  in  rebuilding  the  devastated 
areas  of  human  life.  Had  there  been  less  of 
the  spirit  of  thoughtless  extravagance  and 
self-indulgence,  with  more  of  the  sense  of 
social  obligation,  we  could  also  have  achieved 
that.  The  plain  fact  stands  that  we  were  not 
good  enough  to  do  the  things  which  we  ought 
to  have  done. 

When  the  fate  of  the  Armenian  people,  for 
example,  and  when  so  many  other  interests 
vast  and  vital  are  trembling  in  the  balance, 
why  should  this  nation,  strong,  rich,  wise, 
hopeful,  stand  aloof  and  refuse  to  assume  its 
just  and  equal  portion  of  the  common  respon- 
sibility for  the  peace  and  good  order  of  the 
world?  In  our  case,  as  in  every  case,  posses- 
sion means  obligation.  To  whom  much  is 
given  of  him  will  much  be  required.  We  shall 
never  stand  right  before  the  God  of  the  na- 
tions or  in  the  eyes  of  the  world  unless  we 
are  willing  to  accept  all  the  duties  which  go 
with  high  privilege. 

Hear  these  wise  words  from  the  gifted 
pastor  of  one  of  the  most  active  and  efficient 
Protestant  churches  in  the  city  of  New  York : 
"  Never  before  have  greater  things  been 
offered  to  safeguard  liberty  and  democracy 
— human  lives  in  millions  and  wealth  in  bil- 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  107 

lions  have  been  poured  out.  Never  before 
was  it  so  evident  that  the  arm  of  flesh  is  no 
defense  and  that  safety  lies  in  the  unity  of 
the  Spirit  among  the  nations  to  maintain  the 
bond  of  peace.  Never  before  have  inter- 
national relations  been  so  searchingly  scruti- 
nized and  the  disease  spots  in  imperialistic 
commerce,  tariff  discriminations,  and  threat- 
ening armaments  exposed.  Never  before  has 
it  been  so  generally  recognized  that  a  new 
heart  and  right  spirit  must  govern  nations, 
or  all  devices  to  preserve  international  order 
are  futile.  And  the  probe  has  been  put  into 
other  relations,  notably  those  of  industry, 
with  far-reaching  disclosures.  Undoubtedly 
the  social  control  which  the  war  has  forced 
upon  us  in  manufactures,  in  commerce,  in 
transport,  in  the  distribution  of  food  and 
fuel  will  not  cease  with  the  coming  of  peace. 
This  marks  a  distinct  advance  which  the  war 
has  hastened." 

"But,"  he  adds  in  prophetic  mood,  "men 
of  social  insight  are  aware  that  public  con- 
trol, however  valuable,  will  not  better  mat- 
ters unless  new  motives  come  into  play  and 
men  become  socially  minded.  Never  was  the 
supreme  need  of  the  social  spirit  so  patent. 
It  is  the  day  of  the  Church  of  Christ  as  the 
Fellowship  of  his  spirit  with  the  task  of 


108  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

spiritualizing   every   sphere   of  human   so- 
ciety. * J1 

Here,  then,  is  our  work  cut  out  for  us  and 
laid  ready  to  our  hand.  The  splendid  words 
of  religion  are  to  be  made  flesh  that  they  may 
dwell  in  the  eyes  of  men  full  of  grace  and 
truth.  The  language  of  religion  is  to  be 
translated  into  terms  of  life.  Goodness  is  to 
be  made  interesting,  winsome,  appealing  by 
the  effectiveness  with  which  it  sets  about  the 
building  of  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth 
wherein  shall  dwell  righteousness,  peace,  and 
the  joy  of  the  Divine  Spirit.  It  was  your 
own  Frank  Mason  North  who  bade  you  and 
the  worshiping  portion  of  the  whole  English- 
speaking  world  sing  a  new  song  of  social 
aspiration  in  these  high  terms : 

"Where  cross  the  crowded  ways  of  life, 
Where  sound  the  cries  of  race  and  clan, 

Above  the  noise  of  selfish  strife 
We  hear  thy  voice,  O  Son  of  M&n. 

"O  Master,  from  the  mountain  side 

Make  haste  to  heal  these  hearts  of  pain, 
Among  these  restless  throngs  abide, 
O  tread  the  city's  streets  again, 

"Till  sons  of  men  shall  learn  thy  love 

And  follow  where  thy  feet  have  trod: 
Till,  glorious  from  thy  heaven  above, 
Shall  come  the  city  of  our  God." 

'  In  a  Day  of  Social  Rebuilding.  H.  8.  Coffin,  p.  189.  Yale  University 
Prese. 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  109 

Yonder,  at  the  entrance  of  the  harbor  of 
the  city  of  New  York  there  stands  a  huge 
statue.  It  towers  up  for  three  hundred 
feet  from  Bedloe's  Island.  Significantly 
it  is  the  figure  of  a  woman,  and  in  her  right 
hand  she  holds  aloft  a  lighted  torch.  It  is 
Bartholdi's  "Statue  of  Liberty  Enlighten- 
ing the  World. ' ' 

Some  years  ago  a  certain  set  of  Harbor 
Commissioners  felt  that  the  expense  of  keep- 
ing that  torch  lighted  night  after  night  was 
not  warranted.  It  served  no  practical  pur- 
pose, for  the  lighthouses  along  either  shore 
were  adequate  to  guide  the  ships  which  en- 
tered the  harbor  after  nightfall.  So  for  a 
period  the  torch  was  dark. 

But  before  the  Great  War  came,  another  set 
of  Harbor  Commissioners  decided  that  this 
was  not  the  proper  treatment  for  this  gift 
of  fair  France  to  our  Republic.  They  had  the 
statue  rewired  and  a  great  arc  light  placed 
at  the  tip  end  of  the  torch — and  again  its  rays 
began  to  shine  out  across  the  dark  waters  of 
the  Atlantic. 

While  the  war  was  on  the  light  of  that 
torch  was  seen  in  France,  and  the  people  of 
France  rejoiced  because  the  two  great  Repub- 
lics, one  on  that  side  of  the  water  and  one  on 
this,  were  now  standing  together  in  a  common 


110  SOCIAL   REBUILDEKS 

struggle  for  freedom  and  justice.  The  light 
of  that  torch  was  seen  in  Britain,  and  the  peo- 
ple of  Britain  rejoiced  because  the  two  great 
English-speaking  nations,  one  on  that  side  of 
the  water  and  one  on  this,  were  now  knit  to- 
gether in  an  invincible  alliance  for  righteous- 
ness. The  light  of  that  torch  was  seen  in  Bel- 
gium, and  the  people  of  that  stricken  country 
rejoiced  because  it  shone  out  from  the  shores 
of  a  great,  kind  friend,  whose  generous  in- 
terest was  being  nobly  directed  by  Herbert 
C.  Hoover. 

The  light  of  that  torch  was  seen  in  Ger- 
many, and  to  the  Kaiser  and  his  mad  asso- 
ciates it  revealed  the  handwriting  on  the  wall. 
Like  Belshazzar  of  old,  they  saw  written  over 
against  their  own  names  the  same  four  fateful 
words,  "  Weighed,  Wanting,  Numbered,  Fin- 
ished. ' '  They  knew  full  well  that  the  entrance 
into  the  struggle  of  that  country  where  the 
torch  was  lighted  meant  the  downfall  of  Prus- 
sian militarism. 

Now,  let  that  torch  and  all  the  great  prin- 
ciples for  which  we  believe  it  stands — the 
principle  of  equality  before  the  law,  the  feel- 
ing of  respect  for  the  poor  man's  rights,  the 
sense  of  obligation  which  must  accompany 
privilege  of  every  sort,  and  the  idea  that  the 
human  must  forever  be  exalted  above  the 


SOCIAL   BEBUILDEES  111 

purely  material  values  in  this  great  economic 
and  political  process — let  that  torch  and  all 
the  high  principles  there  symbolized  shine  on. 
And  may  its  gleam  never  again  be  dimmed 
until  all  the  free  peoples  of  earth  shall  walk 
in  the  light  of  it. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE    MAN    WHO    EXALTED    RIGHT- 
EOUSNESS ABOVE  RITUAL 

WE  cannot  make  too  plain  the  fact  that  re- 
ligion is  not  primarily  a  system  of  beliefs  to 
be  cherished.  It  utilizes  beliefs,  but  they  are 
altogether  secondary.  Religion  is  not  pri- 
marily a  set  of  forms  to  be  observed;  it 
utilizes  forms,  but  they  too  are  secondary. 
Religion  is  not  primarily  some  tremendous 
emotional  upheaval  through  which  a  man  may 
pass  on  his  way  to  glory;  it  may  utilize  this 
either  as  a  point  of  departure  or  as  a  line  of 
approach,  but  that  also  is  secondary.  Religion 
is  a  life  to  be  lived  seven  days  in  the  week 
in  all  those  relationships  which  make  up  hu- 
man existence.  The  man  who  is  striving  with 
all  his  might  and  with  all  the  grace  God  gives 
him  to  live  a  life  of  reverent,  obedient  trust 
and  of  unselfish  action  is  religious,  and  no 
other  sort  of  man  can  be. 

We  are  to  study  in  this  lecture  the  work 
and  the  words  of  a  man  who  made  that  big 
truth  stand  out  like  a  barn  door.  He  kept 
his  eye  upon  that  which  was  vital.  He  was 

112 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES  113 

no  rough  man  of  the  hills  like  Elijah  the 
Tishbite.  He  was  no  rude  herdsman  with 
the  smell  of  the  fields  in  his  garments  like 
Amos  of  Tekoa.  Isaiah  belonged  to  the  for- 
tunate class — he  lived  on  Fifth  Avenue.  He 
had  an  assured  social  position  which  gave 
him  ready  access  to  the  court  and  to  the  king. 
He  was  entirely  familiar  with  the  customs 
and  the  costumes  of  fashionable  society,  as  we 
find  in  that  chapter  where  he  rebukes  the 
showy  extravagance  of  the  idle  rich. 

He  was  also  well  educated:  he  shows  that 
literary  skill  which  comes  only  to  those  who 
have  been  trained.  In  all  the  Old  Testament 
there  is  nothing  finer  in  their  sweep  and  finish 
than  some  of  the  utterances  of  this  young 
prophet.  He  had  five  talents  of  mental  ability 
and  of  personal  charm  where  most  of  his 
contemporaries  were  rubbing  along  as  best 
they  might  with  only  one  or  two  apiece. 

He  had  with  all  this  an  intense  passion  for 
reality.  He  showed  scant  regard  for  the 
trance  and  the  ecstasy,  the  rhapsody  and  the 
rhetoric  upon  which  some  of  the  would-be 
prophets  of  his  day  set  so  much  store.  He 
was  strong  in  saving  common  sense  and  in 
stout  regard  for  the  moral  values.  He  was 
sturdy  in  his  insistence  that  men  should 
stand  right  in  the  sight  of  God.  He  stood 


114  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

four  square  himself,  for  he  was  at  once  a  re- 
former and  a  statesman,  a  theologian  and  a 
poet.  By  his  words,  by  his  work,  and  by  his 
worth  he  became  the  first  citizen  of  his  coun- 
try, exercising  a  dominant  influence  upon  the 
history  of  the  nation.  He  entered  into  no 
political  combinations,  but  by  the  sheer 
strength  of  his  own  personality  and  by  the 
wisdom  of  his  prophetic  utterance  he  caused 
the  policies  of  his  country  to  incline  aright. 

His  call  to  be  a  prophet  came  at  a  great 
national  crisis.  He  lived  under  the  reign  of 
the  good  King  Uzziah.  This  ruler  had  been 
sitting  upon  the  throne  for  fifty-two  years 
and  he  had  served  his  country  well.  He  had 
increased  the  material  prosperity  of  his  peo- 
ple ;  he  had  strengthened  the  fortifications  of 
his  capital  city,  Jerusalem;  he  had  brought 
wisdom  and  conscience  to  bear  upon  the  na- 
tional policies.  Now  he  was  dead  and  the 
nation  must  go  on  without  him. 

This  young  man  whom  I  have  described 
saw  the  earthly  majesty  of  the  wise  and  good 
king  go  down  in  defeat  before  the  terrible 
disease  of  leprosy.  But  in  that  same  hour  he 
saw  the  heavenly  majesty  of  the  King  of 
kings,  resplendent  and  enduring.  His  hero 
worship  passed  over  into  religious  faith.  "In 
the  year  that  King  Uzziah  died  I  saw  the 


SOCIAL  REBUILDERS  115 

Lord,  sitting  upon  a  throne,  high  and  lifted 
up,  and  his  train  filled  the  temple. ' ' 

It  is  an  experience  which  lias  been  oft  re- 
peated. Night  brings  out  the  stars.  Men 
see  the  earth  by  day,  but  they  see  the  heavens 
best  at  night.  In  the  year  that  King  Uzziah 
died  Isaiah  saw  the  Lord.  In  the  year  that 
paganism  sat  upon  the  throne  of  the  Roman 
empire,  Saul  of  Tarsus  saw  the  Lord  and  he 
became  Paul  the  apostle,  put  in  trust  with 
the  gospel  of  moral  recovery  for  a  world  that 
was  spiritually  bankrupt.  In  the  year  when 
Tetzel  sold  indulgences  broadcast  in  Ger- 
many, Martin  Luther  saw  the  Lord  and 
ushered  in  a  mighty  Reformation.  In  the 
year  when  slavery  lifted  up  its  head  in  impu- 
dent fashion  and  undertook  to  dominate  the 
councils  of  this  nation,  Abraham  Lincoln  saw 
the  Lord.  In  the  year  when  Germany  perpe- 
trated her  unspeakable  outrage  on  Belgium, 
Herbert  H.  Asquith  and  Sir  Edward  Grey 
saw  the  Lord.  In  some  hard  hour  of  stress 
and  need  every  man  of  them  gained  a  direct 
and  immediate  sense  of  the  divine  concern 
for  human  affairs  and  that  vision  of  things 
eternal  gave  him  strength  to  act.  In  the  year 
that  a  greedy  and  godless  form  of  human  con- 
trol all  but  wrecked  the  civilization  of  Eu- 
rope men  of  vision  in  all  the  lands  of  earth 


116  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

saw  the  Lord,  and  they  became  highly  resolved 
that  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people, 
and  for  the  people  should  not  go  down  in  de- 
feat. In  that  same  high  mood  this  young 
prophet  of  old,  who  was  born  to  the  purple, 
came  upon  the  scene  with  a  vision  of  God  as 
a  God  of  righteousness  before  his  eyes. 

He  would  have  all  men  see  those  eyes  of 
glory  looking  into  every  gathering  of  diplo- 
mats and  every  senate  chamber,  scanning  the 
state  papers  to  which  men  were  about  to  set 
their  hands.  He  would  have  us  see  those  eyes 
of  glory  looking  into  every  counting  room 
and  every  manager's  office,  scanning  the  wage 
scales  and  the  price  lists  whereby  men  serve 
or  wrong,  as  the  case  may  be,  the  interests 
of  other  men  and  women  whose  lives  are 
bound  up  with  their  own  in  that  common  bun- 
dle of  economic  organization.  He  would  have 
us  see  those  eyes  of  glory  looking  into  every 
human  soul,  making  plain  the  fact  that  only 
those  who  have  clean  hands  and  pure  hearts 
can  ascend  into  the  hill  of  the  Lord  or  stand 
in  his  holy  place,  or  engage  with  him  effec- 
tively in  the  rebuilding  of  a  ruined  world. 
Isaiah  was  a  poet  and  this  was  the  refrain  of 
every  song  he  sang:  "Holy,  Holy,  Holy  is  the 
Lord  of  Hosts!  The  whole  earth  is  full  of 
his  glory." 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  117 

He  was  no  moral  prig,  no  spiritual  snob, 
pluming  himself  upon  his  superiority  to  all 
his  fellows.  There  in  that  same  dread  hour 
when  he  saw  the  Lord  he  fell  upon  his  face 
in  the  dust  and  beat  upon  his  breast  and  told 
all  the  sins  of  his  life.  "Woe  is  me !  for  I  am 
undone.  I  am  a  man  of  unclean  lips,  and  I 
dwell  in  the  midst  of  a  people  of  unclean  lips ; 
and  mine  eyes  have  seen  the  King,  the  Lord 
of  Hosts."  Deep  in  his  own  soul  he  had  an 
active,  poignant  sense  of  sin. 

The  man  who  has  no  sense  of  sin  usually 
has  very  little  sense  of  any  kind.  "Blessed 
are  they  that  hunger  and  thirst  after 
righteousness,  for  they" — and  they  only — 
"shall  be  filled."  But  in  that  same  hour 
when  this  frank  confession  came  from  the 
young  man's  lips  he  felt  his  inner  life  cleansed 
by  the  direct  action  of  the  Divine  Spirit.  He 
saw  the  winged  seraph  flying  toward  him 
through  the  open  spaces  of  heaven  and  taking 
a  live  coal  from  the  altar  and  placing  it  upon 
his  unclean  lips.  He  heard  a  voice  say,  "Thy 
sin  is  purged,  thine  iniquity  is  taken  away." 
And  in  the  joy  of  moral  renewal  he  gave  him- 
self at  once  in  eager  consecration  to  the  high- 
est he  saw.  When  the  divine  voice  said, 
"Who  will  go  for  us?  Whom  shall  I  send?" 
the  young  man  answered  back,  "Here 


118  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

am  I;  send  me.''  Thus  lie  became  a  prophet 
of  the  living  God. 

He  made  plain  the  fact  that  religion  is  not 
high-sounding  talk,  nor  tears  of  remorse,  nor 
graceful  sentiment.  Religion  is  the  frank  ac- 
ceptance of  the  actual,  everyday,  backbreak- 
ing  task  of  making  good  in  the  presence  of 
temptation,  of  difficulty,  of  moral  obligation. 

It  involves  a  sturdy  and  heroic  effort  to 
have  the  will  of  the  Most  High  stand  fast  and 
bear  rule  in  all  the  affairs  of  ordinary  life. 
The  man  who  bravely  undertakes  to  do  this 
by  the  grace  of  God  is  truly  religious.  "If  ye 
be  willing  and  obedient,  ye  shall  eat  the  good 
of  the  land:  but  if  ye  refuse  and  rebel,  ye 
shall  be  devoured  with  the  sword,  for  the 
mouth  of  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it.  ' ' 

Isaiah  set  himself  to  the  accomplishment  of 
these  three  high  ends :  First,  he  undertook  to 
lift  the  mind  and  practice  of  his  nation  from 
a  religion  of  ceremony  up  to  a  religion  of 
character.  How  his  words  on  that  point  go 
straight  to  the  mark! — "Hear,  0  heavens, 
and  give  ear,  0  earth:  for  the  Lord  hath 
spoken.  I  have  nourished  and  brought  up 
children,  and  they  have  rebelled  against  me. 
The  ox  knoweth  his  owner,  and  the  ass  his 
master's  crib:  but  Israel  does  not  know,  my 
people  do  not  think."  The  Israelites  were 


SOCIAL   BEBUILDEES  119 

showing  less  insight  as  to  the  source  of 
their  own  well-being  than  were  the  other  ani- 
mals. 

"To  what  purpose  is  the  multitude  of  your 
sacrifices  unto  me  f  saith  the  Lord :  I  am  full 
of  burnt  offerings,  .  .  .  and  I  delight 
not  in  the  blood  of  bulls.  .  .  .  When  ye 
come  to  appear  before  me,  who  hath  re- 
quired this  at  your  hands?  .  .  .  Your 
new  moons  and  your  sabbaths,  the  calling 
of  assemblies  I  cannot  away  with.  .  .  . 
When  you  spread  forth  your  hands,  I 
will  hide  mine  eyes :  yea,  when  ye  make 
many  prayers,  I  will  not  hear:  Your  hands 
are  full  of  blood.  Wash  you,  make  you 
clean;  put  away  the  evil  of  your  doings. 
.  .  .  Cease  to  do  evil;  learn  to  do  well; 
Then  come,  let  us  reason  together"  touching 
our  further  cooperation  in  this  great  matter 
of  human  well-being. 

There  were  men  in  his  day,  as  there  have 
been  men  in  every  day  of  human  history,  who 
thought  that  they  could  couple  together  wor- 
ship and  wickedness  and  get  away  with  it. 
They  thought  that  if  their  left  hands  were 
full  of  worshipful  observances,  their  right 
hands  might  be  full  of  robbery  and  oppres- 
sion, yet  in  some  way  one  would  balance  the 
other;  the  worship  would  atone  for  the 


120  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

wickedness  and  they  could  keep  along  with 
both. 

How  long  will  it  take  men  to  learn  that  only 
as  we  strive  to  have  the  horizontal  relations 
of  our  lives  between  man  and  man  just  and 
true  will  the  perpendicular  relations  of  our 
lives  with  our  Maker  through  worship  become 
acceptable  and  fruitful?  "If  thou  bringest 
thy  gift  to  the  altar,"  Jesus  said,  ''and  there 
rememberest  that  thy  brother" — some  one  in 
your  employ,  or  some  one  who  employs  you, 
some  one  with  whom  you  have  been  engaged 
in  a  political  deal,  or  some  one  against  whom 
you  have  been  cherishing  a  bitter  and  nasty 
grudge — "hath  aught  against  thee;  leave 
there  thy  gift  before  the  altar ;  .  .  .  first 
be  reconciled  to  thy  brother" — by  honest 
dealing — "then  come  and  offer  thy  gift." 

"What  does  God  want  men  to  do?"  Isaiah 
would  ask  to-day  in  his  blunt  way.  Many 
would  reply:  "He  wants  men  to  go  to  church 
and  to  be  baptized.  He  wants  them  to  take 
the  sacrament  regularly  and  to  say  their 
prayers  and  to  read  their  Bibles." 

Well  and  good — thou  hast  answered  right. 
The  Lord  does  want  men  to  do  all  of  those 
things,  provided  always  that  it  be  kept  clearly 
in  mind  that  those  things  are  means  to  an  end 
and  not  ends  in  themselves.  If  all  those  wor- 


SOCIAL   BEBUILDERS  121 

shipful  activities  aid  men  in  doing  justly,  in 
loving  kindness,  and  in  walking  humbly  be- 
fore God,  they  are  beautiful.  If,  however, 
they  are  put  forward  as  substitutes  for  up- 
right, useful,  and  unselfish  action  in  the  ordi- 
nary round  and  round,  then  they  are  worse 
than  useless — they  become  hateful  in  the  sight 
of  Him  with  whom  we  have  to  do. 

How  far  have  we  need  of  Isaiah's  plain, 
straight  word  to-day!  Does  the  habit  of 
worship  mean  always  fair  dealing  on  the 
part  of  those  who  offer  it!  Do  the  working 
people  in  all  our  cities  feel  that  it  is  always 
better  to  work  for  a  church  member  than  for 
one  who  is  not?  Does  church  worship  on  the 
part  of  a  landlord  insure  the  just  and  con- 
siderate treatment  of  his  tenants  I  Do  people 
generally  flock  to  the  merchant  who  is  a  pro- 
fessed Christian,  feeling  sure  that  they  will 
on  that  account  receive  good  goods  at  honest 
prices?  Do  men  rejoice  when  they  hear  that 
the  president  of  a  railroad  or  of  a  steel  cor- 
poration or  a  woolen  mill  in  whose  employ 
thousands  of  them  stand  is  regularly  attending 
some  orthodox  church?  £las  none  of  the  so- 
cial injustice  and  industrial  oppression  prac- 
ticed in  the  last  generation  emanated  from 
men  who  regularly  take  the  sacrament  at  the 
altar  of  Christ  ? 


122  SOCIAL   KEBUILDERS 

These  questions  sound  strange  when  I  ask 
them  in  this  bald  way.  They  ought  not  to 
sound  strange.  It  ought  to  go  without  saying 
that  worship  and  fair  dealing  always  go  to- 
gether. But  as  we  all  know  full  well,  some- 
times they  do  and  sometimes  they  do  not. 

Has  the  Christian  Church,  taking  it  by  and 
large,  in  these  recent  decades  borne  its  testi- 
mony by  open  utterance  and  by  the  consistent 
lives  of  its  members  against  the  sin  of  greed, 
for  example,  as  it  ought  to  have  done?  I  do 
not  believe  that  it  has.  The  ordinary  preach- 
ing of  the  gospel  in  any  Christian  church 
would  be  calculated  to  make  a  man  who  was 
drunken  or  licentious,  who  was  a  Sabbath- 
Tsreaker,  or  a  profane  swearer,  feel  decidedly 
uncomfortable.  All  this  is  well,  for  these 
forms  of  wrongdoing  stand  in  need  of  rebuke. 
But  are  there  not  men  sitting  in  the  pews  of 
the  various  churches  playing  the  commercial 
game  as  others  play  it,  all  unembarrassed  by 
any  Christian  scruples?  Are  there  not  to  be 
found  at  the  communion  table  men  who  buy 
labor  and  material  alike  in  the  cheapest  mar- 
ket and  sell  their  products  in  the  dearest 
without  ever  thinking  of  the  effect  of  their 
action  upon  the  human  lives  involved  in  that 
process?  Are  there  not  men  along  the  broad 
aisles  of  the  various  sanctuaries  who  seem  to 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  123 

be  dominated  in  the  main  purposes  of  their 
lives  by  the  spirit  of  greed,  but  because 
they  are  clean  and  kind  in  their  private 
relations,  they  are  not  made  to  feel  uncom- 
fortable by  the  preaching  of  the  average 
pulpit? 

Hear  these  plain,  straight  words  as  to  the 
need  of  more  religion  in  business !  They  were 
not  uttered  by  some  clergyman  whose  main 
office  it  is  to  preach  the  gospel.  They  were  not 
uttered  by  some  theological  professor  sitting 
comfortably  in  his  seminary  chair  discussing 
in  more  or  less  detached  fashion  the  elements 
of  our  Christian  faith.  They  were  spoken  by 
Mr.  Oliver  M.  Fisher,  one  of  the  leading  shoe 
manufacturers  of  New  England,  upon  his  elec- 
tion as  president  of  the  Boston  Boot  and  Shoe 
Club,  and  were  addressed  to  his  fellow-manu- 
facturers : 

' '  This  country  has  been  a  phenomenal  suc- 
cess in  everything  material.  We  have  been 
the  wonder  of  the  world,  but  we  have  lost,  to 
my  mind,  our  balance,  and  have  given  far 
more  attention  to  the  material  side  of  life 
than  its  importance  warrants.  The  same  at- 
tention given  to  the  development  of  the  moral 
and  spiritual  forces  within  us  could  bring 
about  in  every  community  a  vitalizing  force 
which  would  make  better  communities,  and 


124  SOCIAL   KEBUILDERS 

thus  make  better  the  very  business  in  which 
we  are  engaged. 

"From  my  own  business  experience  there 
is  nothing  on  earth  that  business  needs  so 
much  to-day  as  religion.  By  that  I  mean  the 
sense  of  responsibility  to  God,  to  man,  and 
to  the  obligations  that  go  with  it,  in  order  that 
our  relations  with  each  other  shall  be  the  re- 
lations of  one  brother  to  another.  Obliga- 
tions must  be  kept  and  the  covenants  we  make 
must  be  considered  sacred  and  binding ;  there- 
fore, I  have  come  to  feel  after  a  long  busi- 
ness life  that  some  form  of  Christianity  is  the 
heart  of  the  covenant  of  all  business  life." 

The  minds  of  men  ought  never  to  have  be- 
come dull  as  to  the  vital  elements  in  religion. 
Hear  what  the  great  master  spirits  of  the 
Bible  have  said!  They  ought  to  know  what 
is  essential  and  what  is  merely  incidental. 
Hear  the  words  of  Micah,  who  lived  in  the 
same  century  with  Isaiah!  "He  hath  shewed 
thee,  0  man,  what  is  good;  and  what  doth 
the  Lord  require  of  thee,  but  to  do  justly,  and 
to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  thy 
God?"  Hear  the  words  of  James,  who 
preached  habitually  what  has  been  called 
"the  gospel  of  common-sense" — "Pure  re- 
ligion and  undefiled  before  God  the  Father  is 
this,  To  visit  the  fatherless  and  widows  in 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  125 

their  affliction,  and  to  keep  himself  unspotted 
from  the  world." 

Hear  the  words  of  Paul,  the  greatest  of  all 
the  apostles — ' '  The  fruit  of  the  Spirit  is  love, 
joy,  peace,  patience,  gentleness,  goodness, 
faithfulness,  mildness  and  self-control." 
Hear  also  what  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  said 
— ' '  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all 
thy  heart.  This  is  the  first  and  great  com- 
mandment. And  the  second  is  like  unto  it, 
Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself." 

In  the  same  high  vein  our  greatest  Ameri- 
can said  upon  one  occasion :  ' '  Though  I  am  a 
man  of  faith  and  a  man  of  prayer  I  am  not  a 
member  of  any  church.  But  if  any  church 
will  inscribe  those  two  great  words  of  the 
Saviour,  'Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God 
with  all  thy  heart  and  thy  neighbor  as  thy- 
self,' over  its  doors  as  the  sole  requirement 
for  membership,  that  church  I  will  join  with 
all  my  heart."  Isaiah  had  a  passion  for 
reality,  and  he  was  intent  upon  lifting  the 
minds  of  his  people  from  a  religion  of  cere- 
mony to  a  religion  of  character. 

In  the  second  place,  this  prophet  rebuked 
the  selfish  greed  and  the  moral  callousness  of 
many  of  the  well-to-do  people  of  his  day. 
1  'Woe  unto  them  that  join  house  to  house  and 
field  to  field"  in  their  monopoly  of  the  good 


126  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

things  of  life  "until  there  is  no  room"  for  the 
poorer  people  to  live.  Woe  unto  them  who 
trifle  with  moral  distinctions,  who  seek  to  per- 
suade themselves  that  it  is  possible  to  mix 
their  colors,  "who  call  evil  good,  and  good 
evil ;  who  put  darkness  for  light,  and  light  for 
darkness ;  who  put  bitter  for  sweet,  and  sweet 
for  bitter."  "Woe  unto  them  that  are  mighty 
to  drink  wine,  .  .  .  and  to  justify  the 
wicked  for  a  reward."  He  felt  that  the  cruel, 
grasping  spirit  of  those  who  were  bent  upon 
making  light  of  moral  standards  and  of  mak- 
ing gain  at  any  cost  was  eating  the  moral 
fiber  out  of  Israel  and  making  her  unfit  for 
her  work  of  spiritual  leadership. 

He  believed  that  the  well-to-do  women  of 
that  time  were  largely  responsible.  By  their 
mode  of  life  they  were  setting  the  pace  in  an 
unseemly  expenditure.  Then,  as  now,  the  men 
went  into  the  city  early  in  the  morning  to 
make  the  money  and  the  women  went  in  later 
to  spend  it.  The  habits  of  the  well-to-do  were 
being  copied  and  followed  away  beyond  the 
measure  of  their  financial  ability  by  those 
who  were  less  fortunate.  And  the  whole  mad 
race  in  showy  self-indulgence  had  been  to  the 
detriment  of  the  entire  social  body. 

"The  daughters  of  Zion  are  haughty,"  he 
said.  "They  walk  with  outstretched  necks 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  127 

and  wanton  eyes."  ''The  spoil  of  the  poor 
is  in  their  houses.  They  have  eaten  up  the 
needy."  The  money  which  made  possible 
all  that  showy  luxury  had  been  gained  by 
methods  which  the  Lord  would  not  ap- 
prove. Therefore  the  prophet  said,  "The 
Lord  will  take  away  their  ornaments  and 
their  bracelets,  their  fine  linen  and  their 
costly  apparel. ' '  When  certain  people  under- 
take to  live  in  showy  fashion  without  work- 
ing it  means  always  that  certain  other  peo- 
ple will  have  to  work  in  humble  fashion  with- 
out living. 

"The  point  is  not  that  Isaiah  condemned 
refinement  or  personal  adornment,  but  that 
these  women  were  thinking  of  nothing  else. 
They  lived  in  an  artificial  atmosphere  of 
vanity  and  futility.  They  were  parasites  fat- 
tening upon  the  over-stimulated  sensuality  of 
a  corrupt  society.  And  if  the  mothers  of 
Israel  were  to  be  like  this,  what  was  to  become 
of  the  children  I ' n 

The  Master  of  men  brought  out  in  telling 
phrase  the  moral  antagonism  between  the 
spirit  of  religion  and  the  spirit  of  greed  or 
self-indulgence.  "Ye  cannot  serve  God  and 
mammon."  If  the  love  of  money  is  the 

1  Reprinted  from  The  Consuming  Fire  (p.  55),  by  Harris  E.  Kirk,  by 
permission  of  the  publisher,  The  Macmillan  Company.  . 


128  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

warmest,  the  strongest,  and  the  steadiest 
love  in  a  man's  heart,  then  the  love  of  God 
has  already  gone  down  in  defeat.  It  is  highly 
significant  that  the  most  searching  words 
Jesus  Christ  ever  uttered  were  not  directed 
against  the  coarse  sins  of  the  flesh,  hateful 
as  these  offenses  were  in  his  pure  eyes — his 
most  searching  words  were  directed  against 
that  love  of  gain  which  becomes  the  root  of 
all  manner  of  evil. 

Have  we  not  need  of  the  same  pungent 
message  in  our  own  day  I  When  we  enter  the 
places  of  worship  frequented  by  the  well-to- 
do,  we  are  led  to  wonder  oftentimes  if  their 
industrial  and  political  methods  during  the 
week  have  been  such  as  to  make  them  indeed 
the  favorites  of  heaven.  How  have  they 
borne  themselves  toward  the  weak  for  whom 
also  Christ  died?  People  are  more  sacred  and 
precious  than  holy  places.  The  poor  and  the 
needy  are  more  precious  in  his  sight  than  all 
Te  Deums  and  stained-glass  windows  and 
lovely  altar  cloths.  Inasmuch  as  we  have 
done  equity  and  kindness  or  have  failed  to  do 
it  to  one  of  the  least  of  these,  we  have  done 
it  or  have  not  done  it  unto  him. 

Let  people  give  as  they  live !  My  own  con- 
viction and  practice  for  the  last  thirty-odd 
years  favor  the  habit  of  giving  steadily  as  a 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES  129 

minimum  the  tenth  of  one's  income  to  the 
work  of  charity  and  religion.  This  old  scrip- 
tural rule  has  stood  the  test  of  experience. 
The  Jews  were  blessed  in  basket  and  in  store, 
in  heart  and  in  soul,  by  their  practice  of  tith- 
ing. The  Mormon  Church,  whatever  limita- 
tions theological  and  moral  may  attach  to 
some  of  its  positions,  has  been  able  by  its  sys- 
tem of  tithes  to  send  forth  an  army  of  mis- 
sionaries and  to  care  for  the  needy  of  its  own 
communion  with  an  admirable  thoroughness. 

This  giving  of  the  tenth  need  not  be  made 
a  hard-and-fast  rule  to  be  enforced  univer- 
sally with  no  regard  for  modifying  circum- 
stances. This  might  mean  a  lack  of  equity. 
The  man  with  an  income  of  two  thousand  a 
year  and  the  man  with  twenty  thousand  are 
not  equally  generous  when  they  both  prac- 
tice tithing.  The  rule  of  the  tenth  would  not 
call  forth  an  adequate  measure  of  generosity 
from  Mr.  Rockefeller,  while  it  might  take  too 
much  from  some  humble  toiler  whose  meager 
wages  barely  suffice  for  the  needs  of  his 
family.  But  there  may  well  be  some  definite 
percentage  of  giving  which  mind  and  con- 
science can  approve. 

The  reckless  extravagance  of  many  of 
those  who  have  reaped  a  rich  harvest  during 
the  Great  War,  either  from  large  profits  or 


130  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

from  high  wages,  seems  to  indicate  that  they 
have  thrown  overboard  any  serious  thought 
of  personal  responsibility  for  the  Christian 
work  of  the  world.  There  are  Christian  fam- 
ilies which  actually  spend  more  on  the  theater 
and  the  movies  than  they  give  to  evangelize 
the  world.  There  are  women  who  come  to 
church  wearing  hats  which  cost  forty  dollars 
apiece  and  then  give  fifty  cents  or  a  dollar 
to  Christianize  their  own  country.  When  we 
look  at  the  present  disproportion  in  many 
a  professedly  Christian  home  between  the 
amounts  spent  for  luxury,  pleasure,  self- 
indulgence,  and  the  amount  contributed  to 
make  strong  the  work  of  Christ  in  the  world 
we  wonder  sometimes  if  we  are  worthy  to  be 
called  Christian.  Let  the  scale  of  giving  be 
adjusted  in  consistent  fashion  to  the  scale  of 
living. 

In  the  adjustment  between  attention  to  re- 
ligious forms  and  attention  to  unselfish  action 
there  are  people  who  seem  to  feel  that  the 
Lord  above  is  not  altogether  bright.  They 
seem  to  think  that  he  is  so  constituted  that  he 
cares  a  great  deal  more  about  ritual  than  he 
does  about  righteousness.  What  a  curious 
idea  when  we  hold  it  up  to  the  light!  How 
little  it  matters  whether  we  have  been  bap- 
tized with  a  great  deal  of  water,  as  some 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES  131 

Christians  are,  or  with  very  little,  as  other 
Christians  are,  or  with  none  at  all,  after  the 
manner  of  the  Quakers  and  members  of  the 
Salvation  Army,  who  rely  solely  upon  the 
baptism  of  the  Spirit!  How  little  it  matters 
whether  we  take  the  bread  and  the  wine  in  the 
sacrament  from  the  hand  of  a  man  who  was 
ordained  by  a  bishop  or  from  one  who  was 
ordained  by  a  company  of  elders  or  from  one 
who  was  ordained  by  a  group  of  his  brother 
pastors !  How  much  do  you  suppose  the  Lord 
in  heaven  cares  about  all  that  if  only  people 
in  reverent  fashion  take  the  bread  and  the 
wine  in  grateful  remembrance  of  Him  who 
died  for  us  all?  But  how  tremendously  it 
matters  whether  or  not  those  people,  how- 
ever they  may  have  been  baptized  and  how- 
ever they  may  celebrate  the  sacrament,  in 
their  dealings  with  their  weaker  fellows  do 
justly,  love  kindness,  and  walk  humbly  before 
him!  Righteousness  rather  than  ritual  has 
been  the  major  study  and  the  main  concern 
of  the  great  prophets  and  apostles  of  all  time. 
In  these  days  of  unrest  upon  which  we  have 
fallen,  the  need  of  an  intelligent  and  thorough 
application  of  moral  principle  to  all  the  con- 
crete interests  and  relationships  of  everyday 
life  is  imperative  if  the  very  fiber  of  our 
hardly  won  civilization  is  not  to  be  destroyed. 


132  SOCIAL   REBUILDEES 

This  clear-cut  statement  appeared  recently 
in  The  New  Kepublic:  "These  are  trou- 
bled times.  As  the  echoes  of  the  War  die 
away  the  sound  of  a  new  conflict  rises  on 
our  ears.  All  the  world  is  filled  with  indus- 
trial unrest.  Strike  follows  upon  strike.  A 
world  that  has  known  five  years  of  fighting 
has  lost  its  taste  for  the  honest  drudgery  of 
work.  Cincinnatus  will  not  go  back  to  his 
plow,  or,  at  the  best,  stands  sullenly  be- 
tween his  plow  handles  arguing  for  a  higher 
wage.  The  wheels  of  industry  threaten  to 
stop.  The  laborer  will  not  work  because  the 
pay  is  too  low  and  the  hours  are  too  long. 
The  producer  cannot  employ  him  because  the 
wage  is  too  high  and  the  hours  are  too  short. 
If  the  high  wage  is  paid  and  the  short  hours 
granted,  then  the  price  of  the  thing  made 
rises  higher  still,  until  even  the  high  wages 
will  not  buy  it.  The  process  apparently  moves 
in  a  circle  with  no  cessation  to  it." 

We  shall  never  gain  our  deliveranc?  from 
the  distress  which  lies  heavy  upon  the  whole 
world  by  any  form  of  ritual  or  by  any  clever 
economic  or  political  device.  We  shall  only 
advance  toward  the  restoration  of  well-being 
by  a  more  inclusive  and  persistent  form  of 
social  righteousness.  From  sheer  necessity 
we  shall  have  to  fall  back  upon  that  rule  of 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  133 

life  which  bids  men  look  not  solely  upon  their 
own  immediate  interest  but  also  upon  the  in- 
terests of  their  fellows.  "Among  the  Gen- 
tiles the  great  ones  exercise  lordship  and 
dominion"  over  their  weaker  fellows.  "It 
shall  not  be  so  among  you.  If  any  man  would 
be  great  among  you,  let  him  serve.  The 
greatest  of  all  is  the  servant  of  all.  The  Son 
of  man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto  but  to 
minister  and  to  give  his  life  a  ransom  for 
many. ' ' 

Here  in  the  Old  Testament  was  a  man  pass- 
ing in  review  those  points  of  conduct  where 
strong  men  are  most  liable  to  fall.  He  was 
uttering  what  has  been  called  his  "oath  of 
clearing."  He  is  careful  to  scrutinize 
closely  and  rigidly  his  treatment  of  his  less 
fortunate  fellows.  "If  I  despised  the  cause 
of  my  man-servant  or  my  maid-servant  when 
they  contended  with  me;  what,  then,  shall  I 
do  when  God  riseth  up?  .  .  .  Did  not  he 
that  made  me  ...  make  him  .  .  . 
If  I  have  withheld  the  poor  from  their  desire, 
or  have  caused  the  eyes  of  the  widow  to  fail ; 
or  have  eaten  my  morsel  alone,  and  the 
fatherless  hath  not  eaten  thereof;  ...  let 
mine  arm  fall  from  my  shoulder  blade." 

This  man  of  old  saw  that  we  are  all  objects 
of  the  same  divine  interest  and  divine  affec- 


134  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

tion,  and  any  measure  of  careless  indifference 
to  the  needs  of  one's  fellows,  any  contemp- 
tuous disregard  for  the  rights  of  those  who 
stand  within  our  employ  or  any  useless  showy 
extravagance  which  would  make  against  the 
peace  and  welfare  of  the  social  body,  where 
we  have  become  responsible  and  influential 
members,  would  be  a  thing  displeasing  in 
God's  sight.  It  was  One  whom  we  all  know 
and  honor  who  reached  out  with  his  all-em- 
bracing sympathy  and  said,  "I  was  hungry 
and  sick;  I  was  naked  and  a  stranger  and  ye 
ministered  unto  me.  Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it 
to  the  least  of  these  ye  did  it  unto  me. ' ' 

"When  wilt  Thou  save  the  people, 

O  God  of  mercy,  when? 
Not  kings  and  lords  but  nations, 
Not  thrones  and  crowns  but  men! 

Flowers  of  thy  heart,  O  God,  are  they; 
Let  them  not  pass  like  weeds  away, 
Their  heritage  a  sunless  day, 
God  save  the  people!" 

In  the  third  place,  the  prophet  Isaiah 
pointed  to  the  One  who  could  bring  salvation. 
He  saw  the  life  of  his  country  imperiled  for 
lack  of  righteousness.  He  saw  that  the 
wrongdoing  of  the  people  had  made  the  whole 
head  sick  and  the  whole  heart  faint.  He  saw 
that  the  sorest  need  of  Israel  was  not  that  of 
fuel,  nor  of  clothing,  nor  of  education,  neces- 


SOCIAL   BEBUILDERS  135 

sary  as  all  these  things  are.  Their  sorest 
need  was  to  be  found  in  their  lack  of  char- 
acter. They  were  not  good  enough  to  last. 
They  were  not  good  enough  to  do  their  work 
and  to  enjoy  the  favor  of  the  Most  High. 

But  the  prophet  saw  also  that  all  this  could 
be  changed.  He  was  not  the  prophet  of  de- 
spair but  the  prophet  of  hope.  * '  Cease  to  do 
evil;  learn  to  do  well.  Seek  justice,  re- 
lieve the  oppressed,  judge  the  fatherless, 
plead  for  the  widow.  Come  now,  let  us  reason 
together,  saith  the  Lord :  Though  your  sins  be 
as  scarlet,  they  shall  be  white  as  snow ;  though 
they  be  red  like  crimson,  they  shall  be  as 
wool."  "The  people  that  walked  in  dark- 
ness have  seen  a  great  light.  .  .  .  For 
unto  us  a  child  is  born,  unto  us  a  son  is  given : 
and  the  government  shall  be  upon  his  shoul- 
der :  and  his  name  shall  be  called  Wonderful 
Counselor,  the  Mighty  God,  the  Everlasting 
Father,  The  Prince  of  Peace."  In  that  far 
off  Messianic  hope  touching  a  God  who  draws 
near  to  save  the  people  from  their  sins,  the 
prophet  saw  the  dawning  of  a  new  day. 

Th,e  final  forces  in  human  society  are 
always  the  spiritual  forces.  "Legislation 
does  not  change  men  and  women.  It  merely 
alters  relationships  and  opportunities.  The 
greater  our  material  wealth,  the  more  numer- 


136  SOCIAL   REBUILDEBS 

ous  our  liberties,  the  more  complex  our  social 
organization,  the  larger  our  opportunities, 
political  and  otherwise,  the  greater  the  de- 
mand for  sobriety,  integrity,  thoughtfulness, 
and  devotion.  We  have  more  wealth,  more 
machinery,  more  freedom,  more  opportunities 
now  than  we  have  insight,  self-discipline,  in- 
dustry, love,  and  faith.  Therefore,  we  have 
indifferent  labor,  luxury,  extravagance,  profi- 
teering, unfairness,  and  unrest.  The  only 
things  that  will  ever  bring  the  highest  meas- 
ure of  peace,  prosperity,  and  happiness  to  a 
nation  are  the  spiritual  forces." 

Here  is  the  bottom  question  in  our  Chris- 
tian faith  to-day.  It  is  not  as  to  whether 
Jesus  Christ  was  born  of  a  virgin,  or  whether 
the  body  which  was  laid  in  the  tomb  of  Joseph 
of  Arimathaea  after  Jesus  was  crucified  under 
Pontius  Pilate  was  the  same  body  which  was 
raised  again  the  third  day,  or  the  question 
whether  we  have  in  every  case  the  exact 
words  which  fell  from  the  lips  of  the  Master 
or  only  an  approximately  correct  report  of 
them.  These  are  all  interesting  questions,  but 
they  are  not  central  nor  vital.  The  real  ques- 
tions are  these:  "Is  Jesus  Christ  a  Saviour? 
Can  he  save  the  people  from  their  sins?" 
And  this  is  a  matter  of  experience  which 
everyone  can  test  for  himself.  It  does  not  re- 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  137 

quire  for  its  determination  technical  scholar- 
ship nor  a  knowledge  of  materials  which  are 
accessible  only  to  the  trained  intelligence — it 
requires  only  an  open  mind  and  an  honest 
heart. 

Does  Jesus  Christ  renew  our  hearts  and 
purify  our  affections?  Does  he  strengthen 
our  wills  and  place  our  feet  more  firmly  in 
the  way  of  duty,  causing  us  to  walk  evenly 
and  steadily  in  the  way  that  goeth  upward? 
Does  he  take  the  aspirations  which  have 
begun  to  droop  and  set  them  bravely  against 
the  sky?  Does  he  confirm  and  reenforce  those 
finer  impulses  which  make  for  righteousness  ? 
If  he  can  do  that,  if  he  does  do  that,  for  the 
lives  of  men  and  women,  then  he  is  a  Saviour, 
the  Desire  of  the  nations  and  the  Hope  of 
the  race. 

"Come  now,  let  us  reason  together,  saith 
the  Lord,"  touching  that  which  is  vital.  Re- 
ligion is  not  magic  nor  sleight-of-hand  where- 
by two  and  two  can  be  made  to  look  like 
five  or  possibly  fifty.  Religion  is  not  a  piece 
of  moral  shuffling  whereby  guilt  can  be  im- 
puted to  innocence  and  righteousness  can  be 
imputed  to  those  who  are  doing  wrong.  Re- 
ligion is  a  reasoned  form  of  moral  intercourse 
between  these  finite  spirits  of  ours  and  the 
Infinite  spirit  of  Him  who  is  the  Source  and 


138  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

the  Summit  of  all  being.  It  is  the  living  of  a 
filial  life  in  daily,  hourly  fellowship  with  Him 
who  is  our  Father  in  heaven.  And  its  benefits 
are  to  be  realized  in  that  direct  impress  of 
the  Spirit  of  God  upon  the  heart  of  every  man 
who  makes  an  honest  and  intelligent  approach 
to  his  Maker. 

The  social  problems  which  are  so  vexing 
the  hearts  of  men  to-day  can  be  solved  only  on 
the  basis  of  this  finer  type  of  personal  char- 
acter here  made  possible.  ''The  fallacy  of 
the  Socialist  program,"  says  Francis  G.  Pea- 
body  of  Harvard,  "is  not  in  its  radicalism 
but  in  its  externalism.  It  purposes  to  ac- 
complish by  economic  change  what  can  be  at- 
tained by  nothing  less  than  spiritual  regen- 
eration. Its  program  depends  for  efficacy  on 
unselfishness,  brotherliness,  and  love  of  ser- 
vice, but  no  way  for  the  training  of  these 
virtues  is  provided  or  indeed  devised.  Trans- 
formation of  business  methods  would,  it  is 
assumed,  convert  the  same  people  who  are 
now  brutally  self-seeking  and  skillfully  cruel 
into  agents  of  magnanimity,  fraternity,  and 
justice." 

"To  Jesus,  on  the  other  hand,  the  root  of 
commercial  wrongs  is  in  commercialized  de- 
sire. The  force  of  competition  is  not  one 
which  can  be  abolished  but  it  is  one  which  can 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES  139 

be  converted.  However  loyally  a  disciple  of 
Jesus  Christ  may  enlist  for  a  campaign  of 
social  change,  or  however  vividly  he  may 
dream  of  a  new  industrial  order  more  con- 
sistent with  Christian  brotherhood,  he  finds 
in  the  teaching  of  Jesus  no  encouragement  to 
delay  discipleship  until  that  better  world 
arrives.  On  the  contrary,  he  finds  set  before 
him  the  much  more  difficult  task  of  creating 
the  characters  which  may  utilize  the  better 
order  when  it  comes."1 

This  prophet  of  old  coveted  that  experience 
of  moral  renewal  for  all  his  fellow  citizens 
to  the  end  that  his  country  might  be  sublime 
in  character.  If  the  Great  War  has  taught  us 
anything,  it  has  taught  us  that  "when  ma- 
terial efficiency  is  separated  from  high  pur- 
pose and  is  lined  up  against  moral  reality,  the 
material  efficiency  will  go  down  in  defeat." 
It  may  make  a  few  successful  skirmishes;  it 
may  win  an  occasional  battle,  but  it  will  lose 
the  war.  We  have  seen  "the  will  to  power" 
stripped  of  all  false  ornament  and  standing 
forth  naked  and  unashamed  in  all  its  indecent 
ugliness  on  Flanders  Field.  And  we  have 
also  lived  to  see  the  hateful  thing  go  down  in 
defeat  before  the  arms  of  righteousness. 

1  Reprinted  from  The  Christian  Life  in  the  Modern  World  (p.  82),  by  F. 
G.  Peabody,  by  permission  of  the  publishers,  The  Macmillan  Company. 


140  SOCIAL   BEBUILDEES 

The  seraph  flying  through  the  open  heavens 
in  order  to  touch  the  lips  of  that  gifted  young 
Hebrew  with  a  live  coal  from  the  altar  of  God 
and  thus  set  him  free  for  his  work  as  a 
prophet  of  the  Lord,  symbolized  the  whole 
spiritual  order  which  overarches  this  earthly 
life  of  ours.  Our  feet  may  plod  along  the 
dusty  roads  of  common  life,  but  all  the  while 
our  heads  and  our  hearts  may  be  moving 
freely  among  the  stars.  It  doth  not  yet 
appear  what  we  shall  be  ultimately  but 
already  we  are  the  sons  of  God  able,  if  we  will 
have  it  so,  to  be  at  last  like  him. 

The  ghost  that  walked  in  Hamlet  to  plague 
the  soul  of  the  listless  son,  and  the  fateful 
witches  which  plied  the  soul  of  Macbeth  with 
foul  ambitions  to  wear  the  crown,  cost  what  it 
might,  were  used  by  the  great  dramatist  to 
give  the  sense  of  the  vast,  mysterious,  intan- 
gible forces  which  beat  and  play  upon  these 
little  lives  of  ours.  And  it  is  possible  for 
every  one  of  us  to  be  so  renewed  and  enriched 
by  the  impact  of  the  Divine  Spirit  that  when 
the  call  of  duty  comes  he  will  respond  as  did 
this  prophet  of  old  in  no  uncertain  tone, 
"Here  am  I,  send  me."  The  final  forces  in 
personal  and  in  national  life  are  the  spiritual 
forces. 

It  was  Theodore  Roosevelt,  an  astute  and 


SOCIAL  KEBUILDEES  141 

successful  politician,  who  wrote  these  signifi- 
cant words  just  a  short  time  before  he  died: 
"We  recognize  and  we  are  bound  to  war 
against  the  evils  of  to-day.  The  remedies  are 
partly  economic  and  partly  spiritual,  partly 
to  be  obtained  by  laws  but  in  greater  part  to 
be  obtained  by  individual  and  associated 
effort,  for  character  is  the  vital  matter,  and 
character  cannot  be  created  by  law.  These 
remedies  include  a  religious  and  moral  teach- 
ing which  shall  increase  the  spirit  of  human 
brotherhood,  an  educational  system  which 
shall  train  men  for  every  form  of  useful  ser- 
vice, and  a  government  so  strong,  wise,  just, 
and  democratic  that  neither  lagging  too  far 
behind  nor  pushing  heedlessly  in  advance,  it 
may  do  its  full  share  in  promoting  these 
ends." 

This  land  of  ours  which  we  all  love  is 
great  to-day,  in  so  far  as  it  is  truly  great 
in  the  eyes  of  God  and  in  the  sight  of  the 
nations,  not  because  of  our  broad  acres  and 
our  rich  mineral  deposits,  not  because  of  our 
tens  of  thousands  of  miles  of  railroad  and  the 
material  wealth  accumulated  in  our  banks— 
this  country  displays  its  true  greatness  only 
in  so  far  as  its  purposes  and  ideals  are  found 
to  be  in  harmony  with  the  will  of  the  Most 
High.  National  greatness  as  well  as  personal 


142  SOCIAL   REBUILDEES 

salvation  is  dependent  upon  the  quality  of 
character  within. 

You  may  possibly  remember  how  Phillips 
Brooks  stood  one  night  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  London — it  was  the  night  of  the 
Fourth  of  July.  When  he  had  finished  his 
splendid  sermon  from  the  text,  "The  spirit 
of  man  is  the  candle  of  the  Lord,"  he  paused 
to  add  these  significant  words:  "May  I  ask 
you  to  linger  while  I  say  to  you  a  few  words 
more  which  shall  not  be  unsuited  to  what  I 
have  been  saying,  and  which  shall,  for  just  a 
moment,  recall  to  you  the  sacredness  which 
this  day — the  Fourth  of  July,  the  anniversary 
of  American  Independence — has  in  the  hearts 
of  us  Americans.  If  I  dare — generously  per- 
mitted as  I  am  to  stand  this  evening  in  this 
venerable  Abbey  so  full  of  our  history  as 
well  as  yours — to  claim  that  our  festival  shall 
have  some  sacredness  for  you  as  well  as  for 
us,  my  claim  rests  on  the  simple  truth  that  to 
all  true  men  the  birthday  of  a  nation  must 
always  be  a  sacred  thing.  For  in  our  thought 
the  nation  is  the  making  place  of  men.  Not 
by  the  traditions  of  its  history,  nor  by  the 
splendor  of  its  corporate  achievements,  nor 
by  the  abstract  excellence  of  its  constitution, 
but  by  its  fitness  to  make  men  most  each 
nation  be  judged. 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  143 

"It  is  not  for  me  to  glorify  my  country  for 
anything  that  she  has  been  or  done,  but  on 
my  country's  birthday  I  may  ask  you  for  this 
prayer  on  her  behalf — that  on  the  manifold 
and  wondrous  chance  which  God  is  giving 
her;  on  her  freedom  and  on  her  passion  for 
education;  on  her  care  for  the  poor  man's 
rights  and  on  her  countless  quiet  homes;  on 
her  wide  gates  open  to  the  east  and  to  the 
west  and  on  that  strange  meeting  of  the  races 
out  of  which  a  new  race  is  slowly  being  born 
—I  may  ask  you  for  your  prayer  that  on  all 
these  materials  and  machineries  of  manhood 
the  blessing  of  God  the  Father  of  man  and 
Christ  the  Son  of  man  may  rest."1 

The  welfare  of  any  land  depends  in  the  last 
analysis  on  the  qualities  of  mind  and  heart 
possessed  by  the  rank  and  file  of  the  people. 
And  the  only  people  who  can  show  themselves 
competent  to  cooperate  with  the  God  of  na- 
tions in  the  fulfillment  of  his  great  design 
for  all  the  lands  of  earth  are  those  who  by 
the  development  of  moral  purpose  and  the 
habit  of  spiritual  aspiration  become  indeed 
the  instruments  of  the  Most  High.  No  man 
can  make  good  unless  he  is  fitted  and  pre- 
pared in  heart  no  less  than  in  hand  and  brain 

1  By  permission,  from  vol.  2  of  Phillips  Brooks  Sermons.     Copyright  by 
E.  P.  Button  &  Co. 


144  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

to  meet  the  demands  of  this  exalted  service. 
Be  ye  therefore  ready,  for  in  such  an  hour  as 
ye  think  not  the  call  of  duty  comes. 

When  Admiral  Dewey  died  in  the  city  of 
Washington  he  was  eighty  years  old.  He  had 
spent  sixty-two  of  those  years  in  the  service 
of  his  country.  He  came  of  fighting  stock— 
his  great-grandfather  had  fought  at  Lexing- 
ton in  1775 — and  for  George  Dewey  the  color 
of  life  was  always  red.  When  war  threatened 
with  Spain  in  1897  Admiral  Dewey  was 
placed  in  command  of  the  Asiatic  squadron. 
He  got  his  ships  together,  coaled  them,  fitted 
them  out  with  food  and  munitions,  and  had 
them  at  Hongkong  the  very  day  that  the 
Maine  was  blown  up  in  the  harbor  of  Havana. 
He  had  made  it  the  business  of  his  life  to  be 
ready. 

He  had  studied  the  Philippines  and  the  en- 
trance to  the  harbor  of  Manila  until  he  was 
as  familiar  with  it  all  as  a  college  boy  is  with 
his  own  campus.  When  war  was  declared 
the  order  was  cabled  to  him,  "Destroy  the 
Spanish  fleet  and  take  Manila. ' '  He  went  in 
at  once  and  did  it  without  the  loss  of  a  ship 
or  of  a  single  man.  He  was  ready.  Not 
many  men  were  ready  at  that  time.  Four 
months  after  that  date  our  soldiers  were 
dying  in  droves  in  Cuba  and  in  the  military 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  145 

camps  in  this  country  for  lack  of  adequate 
preparedness.  All  honor  to  the  man  who  is 
ready — when  the  morning  comes  he  goes  up ! 

Now,  peace  hath  her  problems  and  her  vic- 
tories no  less  renowned  than  war.  The  solu- 
tion of  these  problems  in  civic,  in  economic, 
and  in  religious  life  demands  a  service  no 
less  heroic  and  no  less  competent  than  the 
winning  of  battles  by  land  or  by  sea.  The 
best  gift  that  any  man  here  in  this  univer- 
sity can  make  to  his  country  and  to  his  God  is 
the  gift  of  one  more  upright,  devoted,  trained, 
and  serviceable  life,  such  as  it  lies  within 
the  power  of  each  one  of  us  to  furnish.  And 
when  these  great  gifts  are  being  made  here, 
there,  and  yonder,  as  men  give  of  their  best 
to  the  highest  they  see,  we  shall  behold  the 
kingdom  of  God  coming  with  power  and  great 
glory. 

Come  up,  then,  as  college  men  to  the  help  of 
the  Lord  against  the  mighty  disaster  which 
has  befallen  this  poor  world  of  ours.  Build 
here  and  there  and  everywhere  temples  of 
fresh  impulse  and  aspiration.  Build  walls  of 
nobler  habit  and  of  finer  method.  Build  those 
structures  which  shall  stand  when  all  earthly 
tabernacles  have  been  dissolved.  Plan  for 
it  and  pray  for  it,  that  by  competent  leader- 
ship, by  enlisting  the  cooperation  of  right- 


146  SOCIAL   REBUILDEBS 

minded  people  and  by  the  stimulus  from 
above,  we  may  build  with  Him  cities  fair  and 
new  in  that  better  social  order  which  shall  be 
a  joy  to  the  whole  earth  and  the  dwelling 
place  of  the  Most  High! 

"O  beautiful  my  country,  ours  once  more! 
What  were  our  lives  without  thee! 
What  all  our  lives  to  save  thee! 
We  reck  not  what  we  give  thee, 
We  will  not  dare  to  doubt  thee, 
But  ask  whatever  else  and  we  will  dare!" 


CHAPTER   V 


THE  Jews  have  a  way  of  getting  on.  They 
show  their  skill  not  only  in  commercial  life 
but  in  the  political  affairs  of  nations.  For 
nearly  twenty  centuries  the  Jew  has  been  a 
man  without  a  country,  yet  he  has  been  able 
to  make  himself  at  home  in  all  countries  and 
to  put  his  feet  on  the  rounds  of  the  ladder. 

Here  was  Joseph  in  the  land  of  Egypt, 
rising  from  the  position  of  a  slave  boy  until 
he  stood  at  Pharaoh's  right  hand.  Here  was 
Daniel  at  the  court  of  Babylon,  preferred 
above  all  the  presidents  and  princes  of  the 
realm.  Here  was  Benjamin  Disraeli,  a  Jew, 
coming  to  be  Prime  Minister  of  Great  Britain 
and  the  trusted  adviser  of  her  Most  Christian 
Majesty  Queen  Victoria!  And  here  in  the 
same  long  line  was  Nehemiah  at  the  court  of 
Persia,  appointed  to  be  cupbearer  to  the 
king! 

The  office  of  cupbearer  in  that  far  off  time 
was  an  important  and  lucrative  position.  It 
was  before  the  days  of  Federal  prohibition, 
147 


148  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

and  the  man  who  looked  after  the  king's  wine 
was  by  no  means  the  last  on  the  list.  It  was 
his  business  to  see  to  it  that  the  king  was  not 
poisoned  in  his  cups  by  the  paid  tool  of  some 
rival  aspirant  to  the  throne.  The  cupbearer 
was  a  man  honored  and  trusted  in  official  cir- 
cles, and  Nehemiah  had  done  well  for  himself. 

He  lived  at  a  time  of  great  distress  in  his 
own  little  country.  Palestine  at  that  time  was 
as  unhappy  as  was  Belgium  during  the  last 
three  years  of  the  War  and  for  much 
the  same  reason.  Nebuchadnezzar  had  cap- 
tured the  city  of  Jerusalem.  He  had  thrown 
down  the  walls  and  destroyed  the  Temple. 
Many  of  the  people  he  had  carried  into  cap- 
tivity, and  those  who  were  left  were  poor  and 
disheartened.  Industry  was  disorganized 
and  the  whole  country  was  trampled  under 
foot  by  a  brutal  invader. 

Nehemiah  learned  of  the  sore  distress  of 
his  native  land  from  a  group  of  Jews  who 
were  in  Persia.  He  decided  at  once  to  throw 
up  his  lucrative  position  at  that  foreign  court 
and  return  to  Palestine  as  a  leader  in  the 
hard  task  of  reconstruction.  He  made  his 
long,  perilous  journey  across  the  wide 
stretches  of  sand.  When  he  reached  Jeru- 
salem, he  made  a  personal  survey  of  the 
needs  of  the  stricken  city.  He  then  organized 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  149 

and  directed  those  forces  which  were  to  re- 
build the  life  of  his  nation.  His  example  will 
furnish  us  useful  suggestion  for  our  own 
efforts  in  this  hard  period  of  the  world's  his- 
tory, when  so  much  of  the  world  has  to  be 
rebuilt,  and  built  better  than  it  was  before  the 
war. 

The  whole  world  has  been  torn  to  pieces 
during  the  last  six  years.  It  has  been  torn 
to  pieces  politically.  The  boundaries  of  many 
countries  have  been  shifted.  There  has  been 
a  Republic  of  Poland  created  by  taking  terri- 
tory from  Austria,  Germany,  and  Russia. 
There  is  a  Czecho-Slovakia  and  a  Jugo- 
slavia and  a  Lithuania,  and  many  other  new 
and  untried  powers.  Great  areas  of  territory 
on  the  continents  of  Asia  and  Africa  have 
been  transferred  from  one  control  to  another. 
The  geographies  which  we  used  six  years  ago 
are  of  no  more  account  to-day  than  so  much 
waste  paper.  The  Baedeker  guidebooks  of 
Europe  have  all  been  put  into  the  discard. 

The  world  has  been  torn  to  pieces  indus- 
trially. The  work  of  manufacture  was  dis- 
ordered by  the  diversion  of  vast  amounts  of 
capital  and  millions  of  laborers  into  the  task 
of  creating  munitions.  High  wages  were  paid 
and  huge  profits  were  gained  because  the 
work  could  not  be  delayed  until  men  should 


150  SOCIAL   REBUILDEES 

have  struck  closer  bargains.  "A  certain 
mailed  customer  had  appeared  whose  wants 
were  gigantic  but  mad  and  unsymmetrical. 
He  required  only  special  things,  but  he  re- 
quired them  in  enormous  quantities  and  he 
would  pay  any  price.  The  profit  for  serving 
him  was  fabulous — and  for  profit  he  was 
served.  Holders  of  war  contracts  bid  wages 
up  on  each  other  in  a  fantastic  manner.  The 
war  contractor  stood  at  his  competitor's  fac- 
tory gate  offering  ten  dollars  or  twelve  dol- 
lars a  day  for  common  labor,  thereby  upset- 
ting all  the  schedules  and  entailing  millions 
of  readjustments. ' '  The  dislocation  of  indus- 
try became  an  ominous  fact.  Now  the  muni- 
tions are  no  longer  needed  in  such  huge  quan- 
tities and  all  that  capital  and  labor  must  be 
restored  to  those  channels  of  activity  which 
have  to  do  not  with  destroying  men's  lives 
but  with  saving  them.  And  the  task  of  re- 
turning to  normal  standards  and  conditions 
in  industry  and  commerce  is  a  most  difficult 
one  to  perform. 

The  world  has  been  torn  to  pieces  intellec- 
tually and  morally.  Many  of  the  old  beliefs 
and  ethical  standards  have  been  rudely 
shaken  and  in  countless  instances  destroyed. 
Millions  of  men  and  women  were  suddenly 
thrown  out  of  the  wholesome  moral  habits  to 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  151 

which  they  were  accustomed  into  new  and  un- 
tried lines  of  action.  The  disaster  of  the  war 
was  so  appalling  that  the  minds  and  hearts  of 
many  stood  aghast.  They  cried  out  in 
anguish  of  spirit:  " Where  now  is  thy  God? 
Is  there  knowledge  with  the  Most  High?" 
In  all  these  diverse  fields  of  human  interest 
the  dislocation  has  been  so  serious  as  to  ren- 
der the  work  of  rebuilding  a  primary  obliga- 
tion. 

"Is  Europe  dying?"  asks  Sir  Philip  Gibbs, 
a  wise  observer  of  conditions  during  the 
Great  War  and  of  the  general  drift  since  the 
armistice  was  signed.  "Is  Europe  dying?  No 
man,  unless  he  is  blind  or  drunk  with  opti- 
mism, can  deny  that  at  the  present  time  Eu- 
rope is  very  sick.  During  the  last  year  I 
have  visited  many  countries  of  Europe,  and 
in  most  of  them  I  found  a  sense  of  impending 
ruin  and  dreadful  anxiety  touching  the  fu- 
ture. In  some  countries  ruin  is  not  impend- 
ing— it  is  present  and  engulfing.  Austria 
is  so  stricken,  starving,  helpless,  and  hope- 
less that  she  exists  on  charity  alone  and  is 
sapped  of  all  vital  strength.  Germany  is  in  a 
better  state,  but  people  who  imagine  that  her 
factories  are  at  full  blast  and  that  she  will 
soon  be  rich,  strong,  and  truculent  again  are, 
in  my  opinion,  deluded  by  false  evidence. 


152  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

Russia  is  one  great  empire  of  misery,  and  no 
mortal  soul  knows  yet  what  agony  she  still 
has  to  suffer  before  her  social  revolution  has 
worked  itself  out.  Poland,  like  Russia,  is 
typhus-stricken  and  starving  in  her  cities, 
ravaged  by  tidal  waves  of  war.  Italy  stag- 
gers under  a  vast  load  of  debt,  her  paper 
money  worthless  in  its  chase  after  high  prices, 
unemployment  growing  like  creeping  paral- 
ysis, her  constant  strikes  for  higher  wages 
senseless  and  futile.  France  was  joyous  for 
a  little  while  with  the  intoxication  of  victory 
after  years  of  sacrifice,  but  to-day  many  of 
her  men  are  saying:  'Our  million  dead  will 
never  come  to  life  again.  Our  debts  will 
never  be  paid.  Our  industries  are  decaying 
for  lack  of  coal.  Our  deaths  last  year  were 
higher  than  our  births  by  two  hundred  and 
twenty  thousand,  and  our  population  is 
diminishing.  France,  victorious,  is  dying.' 
England  has  been  less  hurt  by  the  war  than 
most  of  the  other  countries  who  were  in  it, 
but  without  analyzing  our  present  discontent 
it  is  enough  to  glance  at  the  headlines  of  to- 
day's paper  or  to  have  a  chat  with  any  dis- 
charged and  unemployed  soldier  to  repudiate 
the  gains  of  England  in  the  war."  The 
whole  world  has  been  torn  to  pieces  and  must 
be  rebuilt. 


SOCIAL  EEBUILDEES  153 

You  will  notice  these  three  things  about 
the  work  of  this  ancient  prophet.  First,  he 
did  not  bring  to  the  task  of  reconstruction 
money  or  material  or  men.  He  brought,  how- 
ever, that  which  was  equally  important — he 
brought  impulse  and  inspiration. 

The  work  of  social  rebuilding  does  not  live 
by  bread  alone.  It  lives  also  by  those  great 
words  of  faith  and  hope  and  love,  of  courage, 
aspiration  and  high  resolve  which  proceed 
out  of  the  mouth  of  God.  In  many  quarters 
to-day  the  sorest  need  is  not  that  of  money 
nor  of  material;  it  is  the  need  of  better  im- 
pulses and  of  a  finer  quality  of  inspiration 
on  the  part  of  the  people  who  are  responsible 
for  the  task  of  rebuilding. 

Here  at  the  close  of  the  Great  War  the 
people  of  certain  countries  are  utterly  dis- 
couraged by  the  calamities  through  which 
they  have  passed.  They  have  no  heart  to 
take  hold.  In  other  lands  the  heads  of  the 
common  people  have  been  turned  by  the  high 
wages  paid  during  the  war,  and  they  have 
lost  all  sense  of  proportion.  They  are  ex- 
hibiting a  reckless  and  demoralizing  ex- 
travagance. In  other  sections  the  common 
people  have  been  made  desperate  by  the 
profiteering  and  the  waste  which  they  have 
witnessed.  They  are  disposed  to  fling  com- 


154  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

mon  sense  and  sound  principle  to  the  winds. 
In  every  community  of  earth  to-day  there  is 
need  of  those  leaders  who  can  furnish  better 
impulses  and  a  finer  quality  of  inspiration 
for  the  great  work  of  social  repair. 

How  fine  was  the  spirit  shown  by  those 
Jews  when  once  the  leadership  of  Nehemiah 
was  brought  to  bear  upon  them  in  the  day  of 
reconstruction  I  "So  built  we  the  wall,  for 
the  people  had  a  mind  to  work;  and  they 
labored  together  from  the  rising  of  the  sun 
until  the  stars  appeared." 

They  were  not  working  with  their  eyes  on 
the  clock.  They  were  not  just  waiting  for 
the  whistle  to  blow.  They  were  not  trying  to 
get  through  the  day  with  as  little  effort  as 
possible  without  actually  losing  their  jobs. 
They  were  bent  upon  accomplishing  some- 
thing. They  had  some  sense  of  joy  and  pride 
in  their  work.  They  wrought  with  their  eyes 
upon  a  worthy  goal. 

In  many  lands  to-day  one  of  the  gravest 
problems  to  be  faced  lies  in  the  unwillingness 
of  able-bodied  men  and  women  to  engage 
again  in  ordinary  productive  effort.  The  ab- 
normal conditions  which  prevailed  for  four 
years  seemed  to  weaken  the  spirit  of  self- 
reliance  and  to  replace  the  habit  of  personal 
industry  with  a  vague  sense  of  dependence 


SOCIAL  EEBUILDERS  155 

upon  society  as  a  whole  for  the  needed  sup- 
plies. 

One  of  the  tragic  things  in  the  work-a-day 
world  to-day  is  the  fact  that  so  many  people 
seem  to  have  no  pride  nor  joy  in  the  work 
they  do.  Several  years  ago  President  Eliot, 
of  Harvard,  was  addressing  an  audience  of 
labor  union  men  on  Sunday  afternoon  in 
Fanueil  Hall,  Boston.  He  was  speaking  about 
the  responsibilities  of  labor,  and  his  address 
was  packed  with  wise  and  cogent  statement. 
The  following  Sunday  President  Driscoll,  of 
the  Central  Labor  Council  of  Boston,  was 
addressing  a  similar  audience  in  the  same 
place.  At  one  point  in  his  address  he  looked 
up  from  the  manuscript  he  was  reading  to 
say,  "President  Eliot  spoke  to  you  last  Sun- 
day about  'The  Joy  of  Work.'  "  Instantly  a 
wave  of  loud,  derisive  laughter  swept  over 
the  audience.  The  idea  that  any  man  could 
be  so  utterly  silly  as  to  talk  about  "the  joy 
of  work"  seemed  to  them  like  a  bitter  kind  of 
joke.  And  that  laughter  was  the  saddest 
thing  that  old  Fanueil  Hall  had  heard  in 
many  a  day.  These  men  had  lost  all  sense  of 
pride  and  joy  in  their  work  without  realizing 
apparently  that  thereby  they  were  losing 
their  own  souls. 

The  manual  laborer  is  not  solely  to  blame. 


156  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

The  sorry  conditions  prevailing  in  much  of 
our  modern  industry  militate  against  the 
thing  for  which  I  would  plead.  When  I  was 
a  boy  growing  up  on  an  Iowa  farm,  the  old 
village  shoemaker  made  boots  with  tops  on 
them  for  my  father  and  for  me.  We  would  go 
in  together  and  he  would  measure  our  feet, 
rights  and  lefts,  and  then  select  his  leather 
and  proceed  to  make  two  complete  pairs  of 
boots.  When  we  went  in  ten  days  later  to 
try  them  on,  if  they  fitted,  as  they  almost 
always  did,  he  had  the  joy  of  seeing  us  walk 
off  in  them  and  he  had  the  satisfaction  of 
looking  upon  a  completed  piece  of  work  from 
his  own  hands  and  brain.  All  this  is  much  less 
easy  in  those  huge  shoeshops  at  Lynn  or 
Brockton,  Massachusetts,  where  thousands  of 
men  and  women  are  working,  each  one  per- 
forming a  single  monotonous  bit  of  labor  with 
a  machine  upon  fifty  thousand  pairs  of  shoes 
which  pass  through  his  hands  in  the  same  pe- 
riod of  time. 

The  wide  introduction  of  machinery,  the 
minute  division  of  labor,  and  the  consequent 
monotony  of  toil  in  many  a  factory,  together 
with  the  long  remove  between  the  efforts  of 
tens  of  thousands  of  men  and  women  and  the 
finished  product,  have  a  direful  influence 
upon  the  artisan.  We  have  overlaid  the  man 


SOCIAL  EEBUILDEES  157 

with  the  machine  for  the  sake  of  the  cheaper 
and  more  abundant  supply  of  things. 

One  of  the  serious  indictments  of  our  pres- 
ent industrial  order  lies  in  the  fact  that  it 
does  not  readily  produce  that  morale  which 
is  needed  in  the  factory  as  well  as  in  the 
army.  The  surroundings  of  industry  are 
often  coarsening  and  debasing.  Many  of  the 
articles  manufactured  are  made  "to  sell 
rather  than  to  serve. ' '  This  underlying  pur- 
pose rapidly  debases  the  industry  and  de- 
grades the  workers.  As  some  one  has  cleverly 
said, ' '  The  making  of  a  cotton  lie  or  a  wooden 
lie  reacts  upon  the  morals  of  the  man  as 
much  as  the  making  of  a  spoken  lie."  The 
spirit  of  the  place  may  be  not  one  of  good 
will  but  one  of  ill  will  between  those  who  em- 
ploy and  those  who  are  employed.  All  this 
is  distinctly  evil  in  its  ultimate  effect.  There 
is  a  constant  moral  loss  when  work  is  done 
under  such  conditions  or  in  such  a  mood. 
There  is  a  tremendous  economic  loss  where 
the  work  of  the  world  is  done  in  the  wrong 
way,  but  the  moral  loss  in  personal  aspira- 
tion, in  that  joy  and  pride  in  one's  own  work 
which  ought  to  accompany  all  useful  indus- 
try, in  the  fine  sense  of  human  fellowship  in 
wholesome  activity,  is  more  terrible  still.  It 
was  a  glorious  fact  that  those  Jews  under 


158  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

this  gifted  leader  stood  ready  to  labor  with 
enthusiasm  from  the  rising  of  the  sun  until 
the  stars  appeared. 

So  long  as  men  and  women  must  work  in 
order  to  live  there  is  nothing  else  for  it.  And 
it  is  altogether  best  that  it  should  be  so.  An 
endless  series  of  holidays  or  even  half-holi- 
days would  be  perdition  for  the  race.  Those 
amiable  loafers  in  the  South  Sea  islands  of 
whom  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  and  Jack  Lon- 
don write  in  such  picturesque  fashion,  are 
not  to  be  envied.  It  has  been  their  sad  lot 
to  live  where  bread  fruit  and  bananas  can  be 
picked  off  the  trees  in  tropical  abundance, 
enough  in  an  hour  to  last  for  a  week,  where 
the  lazy  fish  in  the  warm  waters  of  the  bay 
can  almost  be  taken  with  the  bare  hand.  But 
those  conditions  have  not  furnished  us  that 
robust  and  resourceful  type  of  manhood 
which  most  appeals  to  the  moral  imagination. 
It  would  be  the  making  of  those  easy-going 
natives  if  they  had  to  live  for  a  few  centuries 
on  Cape  Cod  or  on  the  Labrador  coast.  It  is 
by  the  discipline  of  sturdy  effort  that  all  the 
higher  values  are  wrought  out. 

Nehemiah  was  ready  also  to  pay  the  neces- 
sary price  for  that  complete  knowledge  of  the 
facts  which  would  make  him  competent  as  a 
leader.  When  he  reached  Jerusalem,  he  did 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  159 

not  flood  the  community  with  advance  notices 
of  what  he  proposed  to  do  for  its  uplift.  Had 
there  been  newspapers  in  that  day  he  would 
not  have  covered  half  pages  of  them  with 
flaming  advertisements  of  the  "welfare 
work"  he  proposes  to  inaugurate. 

"He  took  his  beast  one  night  and  rode  out 
over  the  city,  taking  stock  of  his  task  and  of 
his  resources.  He  did  not  propose  to  allow 
the  wishes  of  a  good  heart  to  be  a  substitute 
for  the  knowledge  of  a  good  head.  He  in- 
sisted upon  accurate  information  as  a  neces- 
sary preliminary  in  community  building.  He 
returned  from  his  personal  survey  with  that 
definite  information.  Seven  of  the  important 
gateways  of  the  city  were  in  ruins ;  the  streets 
were  full  of  rubbish;  walls  were  to  be  rebuilt; 
and  all  of  this  must  be  done  by  voluntary 
labor."1 

Thus  he  was  able  through  his  thorough 
knowledge  of  the  situation  and  the  inspira- 
tion he  brought  to  develop  the  spirit  needed 
for  the  great  task  of  reconstruction.  He  or- 
ganized the  people  in  such  a  way  as  to  make 
their  service  most  effective.  He  distributed 
his  forces  so  that  in  rebuilding  the  walls  of 
the  city  "every  man  should  built  over  against 


"The  Bible  as  a  Community  Book,  A.  E.  Holt,  p.  56.     The  Womans 
Prese,  New  York. 


160  SOCIAL  KEBUILDERS 

his  own  house. ' '  Here  was  that  combination 
of  self-interest  and  of  public  spirit  which  is 
always  to  be  desired.  Every  man  would 
want  that  part  of  the  wall  near  his  own  home 
to  be  solidly  built,  so  that  if  a  breach  should 
come  under  some  hostile  attack,  it  would  not 
come  there.  By  this  bit  of  strategy  he  induced 
them  to  do  square  work,  and  square  work  only, 
in  the  reconstruction  of  the  life  of  their  city. 

It  is  a  good  plan  always  to  urge  people  to 
do  the  duty  which  lies  nearest.  That  will 
be  the  best  possible  preparation  for  duties 
which  lie  further  on.  "Wisdom,"  David 
Starr  Jordan  used  to  say,  "is  knowing  what 
to  do  next.  Virtue  is  doing  it."  There  are 
far-sighted  people,  alas,  who  are  forever  try- 
ing to  love  and  pray  for  and  Christianize 
their  fellow  beings  on  the  other  side  of  the 
globe,  who  have  not  yet  learned  to  love  the 
people  who  live  on  the  other  side  of  the 
street.  Let  every  man  do  first  the  duty  which 
lies  nearest.  Let  him  build  over  against  his 
own  life  that  particular  part  of  the  better 
world  for  which  he  is  made  responsible.  It 
is  a  good  division  of  labor  when  each  man's 
name  can  thus  be  openly  attached  to  the  bit 
of  work  with  which  he  is  intrusted. 

In  the  second  place,  Neheiniah  showed  the 
people  the  wider  significance  of  what  they 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  161 

were  called  to  do.  He  was  asked  at  one  time 
to  go  off  for  a  trip  into  the  country.  He  re- 
fused. "I  am  doing  a  great  work,"  he  re- 
plied, "I  cannot  come  down." 

He  was  laying  bricks.  But  every  brick 
went  into  a  wall.  The  wall  was  to  surround 
the  capital  city  of  his  country  as  its  main 
defense.  And  the  city  was  Jerusalem,  the 
place  where  the  divine  honor  dwelt  more  con- 
spicuously and  more  continuously  for  cen- 
turies than  at  any  other  spot  on  earth. 

When  we  remember  what  the  salvation  of 
the  world  owes  to  the  Jewish  race;  when  we 
remember  that  the  Jews  wrote  the  Holy  Scrip- 
tures of  our  own  faith;  when  we  remember 
that  the  Saviour  of  the  world,  the  Desire  of 
the  Nations,  was  born  in  Bethlehem  of  Judaea 
of  the  house  and  lineage  of  David,  we  stand 
ready  to  indorse  the  prophet's  claim.  To  lay 
bricks  in  a  wall  which  protects  the  capital 
city  of  a  people  whose  life  is  so  bound  up  with 
the  moral  and  spiritual  advance  of  mankind, 
is  a  great  work,  and  he  had  better  not  come 
down. 

But  this  trusted  leader  was  doing  some- 
thing other  and  greater  than  building  a  wall 
—he  was  aiding  in  the  rebuilding  of  a  nation 's 
life.  He  knew  that  bricks  and  mortar,  walls 
and  battlements  furnish  no  sure  defense. 


162  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

1  'The  walls  of  Sparta  are  built  of  Spartans," 
sang  the  Greek  poet.  The  worst  enemies  of 
any  city  are  ineide  rather  than  outside.  "  Ex- 
cept the  Lord  build  the  house,  they  labor  in 
vain  that  build  it.  Except  the  Lord  keep  the 
city,  the  watchman  waketh  but  in  vain." 
Except  great  principles  and  worthy  ideals  be 
securely  lodged  in  the  minds  and  hearts  of 
the  people  who  inhabit  the  city,  nothing  of 
lasting  worth  is  accomplished.  Therefore, 
along  with  his  task  of  material  achievement, 
Nehemiah  drew  the  attention  of  the  people  to 
the  law  of  God.  "He  gathered  them  together 
and  opened  the  book  and  read  therein  dis- 
tinctly, so  that  all  the  people  could  under- 
stand. He  read  from  morning  until  midday, 
and  all  the  people  were  very  attentive  to 
hear  him. "  He  would  have  every  man  among 
them  looking  up  into  the  face  of  his  Maker 
saying,  "Thy  word  have  I  hid  in  my  heart, 
that  I  might  not  sin.  Thy  word  is  a  lamp 
unto  my  feet  and  a  light  unto  my  path." 

Nehemiah  had  the  full  sense  of  stewardship 
in  regard  to  the  life  of  his  country.  Jeru- 
salem was  to  be  built  as  "a  city  that  was  com- 
pact together"  because  the  house  of  the  Lord 
was  there,  and  all  the  tribes  of  earth  would 
come  up  in  thought,  in  desire,  and  in  aspira- 
tion for  the  quality  of  spiritual  leadership 


SOCIAL   REBUILDEBS  163 

there  offered.  He  heard  the  voice  of  God 
saying  to  Israel:  "I  will  bless  thee,  and  thou 
shalt  be  a  blessing.  I  will  make  of  thee  a 
great  nation,  and  in  thee  shall  all  the  nations 
of  the  earth  be  blessed."  "Save  Israel,"  God 
was  saying  to  him  in  that  high  hour,  "that 
Israel  may  help  to  save  the  world. ' ' 

For  any  man  to  have  the  humblest  part  in 
laying  line  upon  line,  precept  upon  precept, 
thought  upon  thought,  and  aspiration  upon 
aspiration,  here  a  little  and  yonder  a  great 
deal,  in  that  finer  quality  of  national  life, 
which  was  to  reach  out  in  Messianic  fashion 
for  the  betterment  of  the  whole  earth,  was 
indeed  a  great  work.  Where  the  sense  of 
individual  obligation  is  held  apart  from  the 
broader  social  order  it  becomes  weak  and 
thin.  It  is  the  larger  vision  which  fires  the 
heart. 

In  the  third  place,  the  prophet  united  the 
militant  and  the  constructive  virtues.  He 
was  attacked  by  Sanballat,  Tobiah,  and  Ge- 
shom,  three  first-class  rascals  in  that  far  off 
time.  They  sneered  at  Nehemiah's  undertak- 
ing. "What  would  these  feeble  Jews  dot 
Will  they  fortify  their  city?  If  even  a  fox 
would  go  up  by  the  wall,  he  would  break  down 
what  they  build. ' '  But  the  people  had  a  mind 
to  werk,  and  they  kept  right  on  laying  bricks. 


164  SOCIAL   REBUILDEBS 

Then  the  enemies  of  the  divine  purpose  at- 
tacked them  in  open  hostility,  and  the 
Hebrews  had  to  defend  themselves.  "Let 
every  man  gird  on  his  sword,"  their  leader 
cried.  And  the  builders  went  forth  each  one 
with  his  sword  at  his  side.  In  one  hand  he 
carried  his  trowel,  and  with  the  other  he  could 
reach  for  his  sword  to  repel  the  hostile  attack. 
The  work  was  great  and  large,  and  the  people 
were  scattered  along  the  wall;  but  when  the 
trumpet  sounded  announcing  an  attack,  they 
went  swiftly  to  that  spot  with  their  re- 
enforcements  and  drove  the  enemy  back. 
"So  built  we  the  wall;  for  people  had  a  mind 
to  work" — that  was  their  rallying  cry.  And 
the  wall  went  steadily  up,  and  the  moral  fiber 
of  the  nation  was  steadily  strengthened  by 
devotion  to  a  common  task. 

The  two  lines  of  effort  here  suggested  may 
well  be  followed  at  this  very  hour.  The  mili- 
tant and  the  constructive  virtues  are  both  in 
demand.  The  minds  of  all  honest-hearted 
people  to-day  are  strongly  set  upon  that 
wholesome  industry  which  ministers  to  the 
peace  and  prosperity  of  society.  But  the 
sword  as  well  as  the  trowel  has  to  be  taken 
along.  It  is  necessary  for  the  friends  of 
righteousness  to  smite  hip  and  thigh  the  ene- 
mies of  the  divine  purpose.  The  rum-seller, 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES  165 

the  gambler,  and  the  brothel-keeper,  the  in- 
dustrial slacker,  the  political  grafter,  and  the 
ruthless  profiteer — these  are  the  Sanballats 
of  modern  life,  and  they  have  to  be  fought 
all  along  the  line.  When  they  hinder  the  work 
of  social  reconstruction,  they  have  to  be 
beaten  back  that  the  good  work  may  go  on. 

Here  at  this  hour  in  our  own  land  the  worst 
enemies  of  the  republic  are  not  to  be  found 
among  those  red-mouthed  individuals  who 
are  forever  screaming  about  revolution.  The 
actual  influence  of  these  showy,  noisy  souls 
upon  the  great  body  of  our  citizens,  as  we 
saw  in  the  last  presidential  election,  is  almost 
negligible.  The  worst  enemies  are  to  be 
found  among  those  who  are  too  indifferent, 
too  selfish,  too  preoccupied  to  raise  a  hand. 
"Let  George  do  it!"  Let  anybody  do  it,  so 
long  as  we  are  not  disturbed. 

Here  we  were  in  the  summer  of  1920 
charged  with  the  responsibility  of  selecting 
a  President  of  the  United  States.  In  the  face 
of  the  vital  and  vexing  national  questions  he 
would  have  to  consider,  and  in  the  face  of 
the  world  problems  with  which  he  would  have 
to  deal,  had  there  ever  been  a  time  when  it 
was  more  important  that  a  man,  strong,  wise, 
just,  far-seeing,  competent,  statesmanlike, 
should  be  sent  to  the  White  House?  What  a 


166  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

challenge  the  responsibility  of  selecting  such 
a  man  offered  to  thoughtful,  discriminating, 
patriotic,  and  honest  citizens  everywhere! 
You  would  have  expected  them  to  rise  up  and 
insist  upon  having  their  way  rather  than 
leave  the  grave  responsibility  of  making  suit- 
able nominations  to  the  short-sighted,  parti- 
san politicians  who  are  always  so  actively  on 
the  job. 

Here  we  were  charged  also  with  the  respon- 
sibility of  electing  a  Congress  to  deal  in  a 
large  and  just  way  with  those  vast  problems 
at  home  and  abroad,  and  to  show  us  some- 
thing better  than  the  dallying  and  vaporing 
in  the  United  States  Senate  which  has  humili- 
ated us  all.  It  is  the  duty  of  every  right- 
minded  man  and  of  every  right-minded 
woman,  now  charged  with  a  new  political  re- 
sponsibility, to  go  forth  with  sword  and 
trowel  to  fight  and  to  build  in  that  better 
quality  of  national  life  so  sorely  needed  for 
our  own  security  and  for  the  wider  service 
of  the  world's  need. 

I  could  speak  of  many  different  directions 
which  this  work  of  rebuilding  might  well  take 
— let  me  name  just  two.  There  must  come, 
in  the  first  place,  here  in  our  own  land  as 
well  as  in  other  lands,  a  better  type  of  indus- 
trial life.  It  is  not  a  mere  question  of  wages 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  167 

and  hours — wages  are  high  to-day  and  the 
hours  are  being  adjusted  more  and  more 
with  reference  to  the  needs  of  life.  It  is  a 
question  as  to  the  mood  and  temper  in  which 
men  with  capital  and  organizing,  administra- 
tive ability,  and  men  with  muscle  and 
mechanical  skill  shall  act.  Shall  they  act 
together  in  the  spirit  of  cooperation  and 
brotherhood,  or  shall  they  draw  apart  in  the 
spirit  of  antagonism?  In  my  judgment  we 
shall  only  achieve  that  larger  measure  of 
peace  and  prosperity  in  the  workaday  world 
where  it  is  so  sorely  needed  as  we  realize 
these  three  great  social  principles. 

1.  There  must  come  a  more  democratic 
spirit  in  the  control  of  the  great  industries. 
Every  man,  whether  he  be  a  millionaire  or  a 
hodcarrier,  is  consulted  as  to  who  shall  be  the 
mayor  of  his  city  and  who  shall  compose  the 
city  council.  He  is  consulted  as  to  who  shall 
be  the  governor  of  his  State  and  who  shall  sit 
in  the  Legislature.  He  is  consulted  as  to  who 
shall  be  President  of  the  United  States  and 
who  shall  make  up  our  national  Congress.  He 
is  compelled  to  live  under  the  laws  made  and 
executed  by  those  officials,  and  it  is  only  just 
that  he  should  be  consulted. 

But  touching  that  which  affects  his  welfare 
and  the  welfare  of  his  family  much  more  inti- 


168  SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

mately  and  steadily  than  all  this  he  has  some- 
times been  scarcely  consulted  at  all.  He  has 
been  offered  employment  on  certain  terms, 
and  has  been  told  that  he  could  either  "take 
it  or  leave  it"  and  that  was  all  there  was 
about  it.  He  has  not  been  consulted  touching 
the  various  methods  and  conditions  which 
affect  his  employment  in  that  industry.  He 
has  not  been  called  into  conference,  either 
personally  or  through  his  representatives, 
touching  those  policies  which  will  determine 
the  spirit  and  temper  in  which  the  work  is  to 
be  done.  He  has  been  treated  as  a  "hand" 
rather  than  as  a  man. 

The  man  who  invests  his  money  and  his 
organizing,  administrative  ability  in  any 
enterprise  has  a  clear  right  to  be  heard 
touching  the  operation  of  that  industry.  And 
the  plain  men  and  women  not  possessed  of 
capital  or  of  five  talents  each  of  that  organiz- 
ing ability,  but  putting  in  for  years  together 
the  best  part  of  their  lives  in  the  work  they 
do — they  too  have  a  right  to  b6  heard.  And 
the  broad-minded  employers  (of  whom  there 
are  many  to-day,  and  the  number  is  steadily 
increasing)  are  recognizing  that  fact.  They 
are  encouraging  the  spirit  of  initiative,  the 
extension  of  responsibility,  the  development 
of  plans  by  the  workers  themselves  for  the 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

improvement  of  the  enterprise  and  for  the 
larger  welfare  of  all  those  whose  lives  are 
bound  up  together  in  that  economic  organiza- 
tion. 

One  of  the  largest  and  most  important 
railroad  corporations  in  the  country,  the 
Pennsylvania,  opened  the  New  Year  with  a 
plan  for  consultation  with  their  employees 
which  will  surely  make  for  better  relations. 
The  plan  provides  for  a  system  of  committees, 
local  and  regional,  culminating  in  a  joint  re- 
viewing committee  of  the  whole  Pennsylvania 
system.  On  each  one  of  these  committees  the 
managers  and  the  employees  have  equal  rep- 
resentation. Questions  which  arise  are  to  be 
settled  by  the  local  or  regional  committee  ac- 
cording to  the  issues  involved,  but  the  final 
authority  is  lodged  with  the  joint  reviewing 
committee,  whose  decisions  are  to  be  accepted 
as  final.  In  order  to  prevent  a  possible  dead- 
lock in  the  committees  through  the  lining  up 
of  employees'  representatives  on  one  side 
and  the  managers  on  the  other,  a  two-thirds 
vote  is  required  for  all  decisions.  This  plan 
does  not  deny  the  right  to  strike,  but  it  in- 
sures a  reasonable  time  for  discussion  of  any 
differences  or  grievances  before  such  action 
looking  toward  a  strike  could  be  taken.  The 
hearty  agreement  upon  this  plan  by  both. 


170  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

managers  and  employees,  giving  to  both,  sides 
a  voice  in  determining  questions  of  policy, 
promises  a  lessening  of  friction  and  an  in- 
crease of  the  spirit  of  cooperation. 

"Inasmuch  as  the  workers  contribute  to 
production  the  indispensable  factor  of  their 
toil  and  skill,  the  Christian  thinker  must 
recognize  the  fairness  of  labor's  insistence 
upon  being  heard  in  all  adjustments  which 
have  to  do  with  the  industry.  The  battle  for 
a  voice  in  wage-fixing  has  been  pretty  well 
fought  through;  but  industrial  democracy 
really  implies  more  than  such  collective  bar- 
gaining in  wages  and  hours.  It  implies  that 
labor  shall  be  heard  in  all  questions  which 
have  to  do  with  the  conditions  in  which  the 
laborer  works,  with  the  shop  and  its  control, 
with  the  control  of  the  industry  itself  through 
place  on  boards  of  directors.  The  trade  union 
is  fighting  and  winning  a  great  battle  against 
paternalism.  Capitalists  are  not  as  a  rule 
moved  by  impulses  to  oppression.  Undoubt- 
edly the  majority  of  them  mean  well  by  their 
men.  They  are  willing  to  do  all  within  their 
power  for  the  men  except  to  let  the  men  have 
the  power  to  do  for  themselves.  But  pater- 
nalism is  an  insidious  foe  to  democracy. 
.  .  .  The  Christian  ideal  is  not  a  class 
struggle  and  a  class  triumph,  but  a  coopera- 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  171 

lion  on  all  sides  for  the  good  of  the  whole 
community. ' ' 

2.  There  must  come  a  more  equitable  dis- 
tribution of  the  good  things  of  life  between 
those  who  toil  mainly  with  their  heads  and 
those  who  toil  mainly  with  their  hands.  You 
notice  that  I  do  not  say  equal,  I  say  equitable. 
I  believe  that  it  is  altogether  just  and  desir- 
able that  to  men  of  five  talents  of  organizing 
and  administrative  ability  there  should  be 
given  an  exceptional  reward.  It  is  in  that 
way  that  the  development  of  exceptional  abil- 
ity is  stimulated.  But  the  distribution  has 
not  always  been  equitable. 

Let  me  put  the  matter  in  concrete  form: 
Some  years  ago  in  the  city  of  New  York  a 
gentleman  died  whose  name  was  Cornelius 
Vanderbilt.  He  was  a  man  possessed  of  many 
splendid  traits  of  character  in  his  personal  and 
domestic  life.  He  was  highly  esteemed  and 
beloved  by  a  wide  circle  of  personal  friends. 
He  gave  generously  of  his  means  to  the  work 
of  religion,  of  education,  and  of  charity.  I 
am  not  singling  him  out  for  any  sort  of  per- 
sonal attack,  which  would  be  manifestly  un- 
fair. I  merely  select  him  as  an  outstanding 
figure  in  a  certain  system. 

When  this  gentleman  died  we  are  told  that 
he  left  a  fortune  in  round  numbers  of  one 


SOCIAL  REBUILDEBS 


eighty 


- 


"  " 


e          tho          l 

rH~r;=-« 


SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS  173 

years  before  Christ.  In  round  numbers,  then, 
the  human  race,  according  to  that  reckoning, 
has  been  here  on  earth  about  six  thousand 
years.  Now,  suppose  that  Adam  had  lived 
until  this  day.  Suppose  that  he  had  worked 
steadily  three  hundred  days  in  the  year  for 
those  six  thousand  years.  Suppose  that  he 
had  been  possessed  of  no  ordinary  ability  but 
had  been  a  man  capable  of  earning  one  hun- 
dred dollars  a  day,  which  is  very  good  pay — 
better  than  that  received  by  any  professor  in 
Yale  University  at  the  present  time.  If  Adam 
had  worked  for  six  thousand  years,  three 
hundred  days  in  the  year  and  had  received 
one  hundred  dollars  a  day  in  wages  over  and 
above  the  cost  of  his  keep,  he  too  would  have 
been  at  this  time  in  possession  of  exactly 
$180,000,000,  not  making  allowance  for  the 
interest  on  his  savings. 

Now,  the  question  arises,  Did  Mr.  Vander- 
bilt,  in  his  short  lifetime,  render  a  service  to 
society  equal  in  value  to  what  a  man  capable 
of  earning  one  hundred  dollars  a  day  would 
have  rendered  if  he  had  worked  three  hun- 
dred days  in  the  year  for  the  period  of  six 
thousand  years?  I  do  not  know  what  you 
think  about  it,  but  I  do  not  believe  that  he 
did.  If  I  were  a  betting  man,  I  would  put 
my  money  on  Adam. 


174  SOCIAL   REBUILDERS 

We  all  know  that  if  every  man  had  all  that 
he  earns  by  actual  service  rendered  to  society 
by  the  labor  of  either  hand  or  brain,  and  if  no 
man  had  any  more  than  he  earns  by  such 
service  rendered,  the  whole  industrial  ques- 
tion would  be  settled.  There  must  come  a 
more  equitable  distribution  of  the  good  things 
of  life  between  those  who  labor  mainly  with 
their  hands  and  those  who  labor  mainly  with 
their  heads. 

"The  many  and  varied  schemes,  now  so 
vigorously  undertaken  by  intelligent  em- 
ployers, of  conciliation,  arbitration,  cooper- 
ation, profitsharing,  and  industrial  partner- 
ship are  not  to  be  regarded  as  forms  of  benefi- 
cence or  magnanimity.  To  initiate  them  in 
the  spirit  of  paternalism  or  patronage  or 
charity  is,  in  the  present  temper  of  the 
working  classes,  to  foredoom  them  to  failure. 
They  represent  a  candid  recognition  of  the 
fact  that  the  wage-system  in  its  bare  economic 
form  must  be  supplemented,  if  it  is  not  to  be 
supplanted;  that  the  line  of  division  between 
employer  and  employed  must  be  effaced  by 
fraternalism,  if  it  is  not  to  be  obliterated  by 
socialism.  Schemes  of  industrial  reform  must 
be  incorporated  with  the  business,  adapted  to 
the  type  of  industry  concerned,  and  charged 
to  production.  The  proper  payment  for  them 


SOCIAL   REBUILDERS  175 

is  not  gratitude,  but  loyalty.  They  are  one 
form  of  evidence  that  the  industrial  order, 
imperfect  as  it  is,  may  be  developed  by  intel- 
ligence and  ingenuity  into  a  system  of  mutual 
advantage,  which  is  certainly  more  accessible, 
and  may  perhaps  be  more  durable,  than  the 
vague  ventures  which  social  revolution  now 
so  lightly  proposes  to  make. ' n 

3.  There  must  come  a  steadier  exaltation 
of  the  human  values  at  stake.  What  is  it  all 
for,  this  huge  process  of  production,  distribu- 
tion, and  exchange!  What  is  the  final  office 
of  these  mills  and  mines,  these  farms  and  fac- 
tories, these  steamships  and  railroads,  these 
stores  and  banks?  The  process  certainly 
does  not  exist  for  the  purpose  of  creating  im- 
mense private  fortunes  in  the  hands  of  a  few 
or  for  the  mere  increase  of  a  cheaper  and 
more  abundant  supply  of  things.  The  process 
is  meant  to  minister  to  human  well-being.  Its 
office  is  to  make  human  life  richer,  worthier, 
more  joyous.  It  must  stand  or  fall  ultimately 
by  its  success  or  failure  at  that  point. 

It  was  John  D.  Rockefeller,  Jr.,  who  said : 
'  *  The  soundest  industrial  policy  is  that  which 
has  constantly  in  mind  the  welfare  of  em- 
ployees as  well  as  the  making  of  profits. 

1  Reprinted  from  The  Christian  Life  in  the  Modern  World  (p.  102),  by 
F.  O.  Peabody,  by  permission  of  the  publishers,  The  Macmillan  Company. 


176  SOCIAL   EEBUILDEES 

When  human  considerations  demand  it  this 
policy  subordinates  profit  to  welfare.  In- 
dustrial relations  are  essentially  human 
relations.  The  day  has  passed  when  the  con- 
ception of  industry  as  chiefly  a  revenue- 
producing  process  can  be  maintained." 

The  wealth  of  the  nation  is  not  indicated, 
as  Buskin  used  to  argue  in  his  strenuous  way, 
by  its  broad  acres,  or  by  its  mineral  wealth, 
or  by  the  thousands  of  miles  of  railroad  that 
may  have  been  built,  or  by  the  accumulated 
wealth  stored  up  in  its  banks.  "The  wealth 
of  the  nation  is  indicated  always  by  the  num- 
ber of  healthy,  happy,  clear-eyed,  and  aspir- 
ing men,  women,  and  children  it  can  show." 
The  human  values  are  supreme  and  final. 

Here  is  a  man  who  builds  a  factory,  and 
he  carries  it  on  in  such  fashion  that  the  smoke 
which  flies  from  his  factory  chimney  is  the 
black  flag  of  piracy.  Men  and  women  are 
there  being  robbed  of  the  finer  results  which 
should  flow  from  their  employment.  They 
may  or  may  not  be  receiving  good  wages,  but 
they  are  not  working  in  that  mood  and  tem- 
per which  makes  for  the  development  of  the 
finer  values.  Here  is  another  man  on  the 
other  side  of  the  city  who  builds  a  factory, 
and  he  carries  it  on  in  such  a  fashion  that 
the  smoke  which  flies  from  his  chimney  is 


SOCIAL   BEBUILDERS  177 

like  a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day  guiding  the  peo- 
ple whose  lives  are  bound  up  in  that  enter- 
prise toward  the  land  of  promise.  He  shows 
so  much  of  the  spirit  of  social  justice,  so  much 
consideration  for  the  people  in  his  employ,  and 
he  maintains  such  a  spirit  of  cooperation  and 
good  will  in  the  enterprise  that  the  human 
values  are  being  constantly  advanced. 

The  man  who  builds  and  operates  this 
second  factory  may  be  making  shoes,  or 
steam  engines,  or  cotton  cloth,  or  anything 
you  please,  but  what  is  much  more  to  the 
purpose  he  is  making  manhood  and  woman- 
hood in  the  lives  of  all  those  who  stand  in  his 
employ.  We  are  to  judge  of  the  fitness  or  the 
unfitness  of  all  methods  of  industry  by  their 
outcome  in  the  creation  or  the  destruction  of 
these  human  values. 

"The  fundamental  ethical  teaching  of 
Jesus  is  the  supreme  worth  of  every  per- 
sonality in  the  sight  of  God.  The  primary  in- 
terest of  Christianity  in  all  economic  problems 
is,  therefore,  that  human  values  shall  be  kept 
in  the  first  place.  If  modern  societies  could 
once  be  made  to  act  upon  the  simple  principle 
that  a  man's  life  consisteth  not  in  the  abun- 
dance of  the  things  that  he  possesseth,  that 
all  social  institutions  are  made  for  man,  not 
man  for  the  institutions,  and  consequently 


178          SOCIAL   EEBUILDERS 

are  to  be  judged  by  their  effect  on  men, 
women,  and  children,  the  longest  single  stride 
toward  the  bringing  in  of  the  kingdom  of  God 
on  earth  would  have  been  taken.  For  this 
principle,  once  set  to  work,  would  quickly 
reach  out  to  most  vital  implications." 

In  the  second  place,  there  must  come  in  this 
day  of  social  rebuilding  the  development  and 
maintenance  of  a  finer  quality  of  national 
soul.  The  most  terrible  thing  the  world  saw 
during  the  Great  War  was  not  the  outrage 
upon  Belgium,  awful  as  that  was  in  its  bar- 
barity, nor  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania  with 
the  drowning  of  hundreds  of  helpless  women 
and  children,  nor  the  judicial  murder  of  men 
like  Captain  Fryatt  or  women  like  Edith 
Cavell.  All  this  was  frightful  in  the  extreme, 
but  there  was  something  worse.  The  most  ter- 
rible thing  we  saw  in  the  Great  War  was  the 
evidence  of  the  utter  decay  of  what  had  been 
a  great  national  soul  in  Germany. 

There  was  a  Germany  once,  the  Germany 
of  Luther  and  Melanchthon,  of  Kant  and 
Hegel,  of  Goethe  and  Schiller,  of  Beethoven 
and  Bach,  of  Carl  Schurz  and  Franz  Sigel, 
which  was  honored  and  esteemed  throughout 
the  world.  In  that  Germany  all  the  nations 
of  the  earth  were  being  blessed.  But  in  the 
year  1914  the  world  suddenly  awoke  to  the 


SOCIAL  REBUILDEES  179 

fact  that  this  Germany  which  had  been  held 
in  honor  was  gone. 

In  the  years  following  1870  the  German 
people  turned  over  the  keeping  of  their  soul, 
into  the  hands  of  certain  false  gods.  The 
gospel  most  industriously  preached  in  Ger- 
many during  that  period  was  not  the  Gospel 
according  to  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke,  and  John. 
It  was  the  gospel  according  to  Treitschke, 
Nietzsche,  and  Bernhardi.  It  was  "  another 
gospel"  which  was  not  "another"  but  a 
counsel  of  evil.  In  this  gospel  of  the  New 
Testament  I  read,  "Among  the  Gentiles  the 
great  ones  exercise  lordship  and  dominion.  It 
shall  not  be  so  among  you.  If  any  man  would 
be  great  among  you  let  him  serve.  The  great- 
est of  all  is  the  servant  of  all." 

But  in  this  other  gospel  I  find  these  virtues 
of  compassion,  pity,  and  self-sacrifice  spurned 
as  belonging  to  what  these  misguided  men 
were  pleased  to  call ' '  the  slave  morality. "  "I 
denounce  Christianity,"  said  Nietzsche,  "as 
the  greatest  of  all  possible  corruptions,  since 
it  combats  the  good  red  blood  of  human  life. 
The  qualities  of  mercy,  charity,  self-sacrifice 
are  utterly  pernicious  since  they  mean  the 
transfer  of  power  from  the  hands  of  the 
strong  to  the  hands  of  the  weak  whose  proper 
business  it  is  to  serve  the  strong.  Therefore 


180  SOCIAL  EEBUILDERS 

be  hard.  Face  life  defiant.  Live  dangerously. 
Will  to  live  in  perfect  power."  So  far 
Nietzsche!  And  this  was  the  gospel  indus- 
triously preached  and  practised  in  Germany 
during  the  years  following  1870,  and  it 
brought  about  the  decay  of  a  great  national 
soul. 

Now  all  that  will  have  to  be  changed.  In 
the  future,  as  in  the  past,  we  shall  have  to 
live  with  Germany  and  to  reckon  with  Ger- 
many as  one  of  the  potent  factors  in  the 
world's  life — and  we  cannot  live  on  good 
terms  with  a  nation  possessed  of  such  a  mood 
as  that  just  indicated.  It  will  have  to  be 
changed. 

It  cannot  be  changed  by  contempt,  bitter- 
ness, and  hatred.  Satan  does  not  cast  out 
Satan.  Beelzebub,  the  prince  of  the  devils, 
does  not  turn  around  and  cast  out  all  the 
other  devils.  The  quality  of  national  life  in 
Germany  can  only  be  changed  by  a  finer 
quality  of  national  soul  in  those  countries 
with  which  Germany  will  have  to  live.  There 
must  be  a  finer  quality  of  soul  in  Britain, 
in  France,  in  Italy,  and  in  the  United  States 
of  America.  And  that  plain  fact  brings  home 
to  us  all  an  immediate  sense  of  duty. 

We  can  readily  see  the  defects  in  other 
nations — are  we  equally  ready  to  recognize 


SOCIAL  BEBUILDERS  181 

them  in  our  own  national  life?  It  is  for  us 
to  ask  ourselves  whether  at  this  hour  the 
stream  of  personal  ambition  and  of  self- 
interest  is  not  running  more  strongly  here  in 
our  own  land  than  is  the  sense  of  the  necessity 
for  social  discipline,  for  ordered  activity,  and 
for  the  acceptance  of  our  full  share  of  respon- 
sibility for  the  peace  and  good  order  of  the 
world. 

"If  drunk  with  sight  of  power,  we  loose 
Wild  tongues  that  have  not  Thee  in  awe, 

Such  boasting  as  the  Gentiles  use 
Or  lesser  breeds  without  the  law: 

Lord  God  of  hosts,  be  with  us  yet, 

Lest  we  forget,  lest  we  forget. 

"Far-called  our  navies  melt  away, 

On  dune  and  headland  sinks  the  fire; 

Lo,  all  our  pomp  of  yesterday 
Is  one  with  Nineveh  and  Tyre! 

Judge  of  the  nations,  spare  us  yet, 

Lest  we  forget,  lest  we  forget. 

"The  tumult  and  the  shouting  dies; 

The  captains  and  the  kings  depart; 
Still  stands  Thine  ancient  sacrifice, 

An  humble  and  a  contrite  heart; 
Lord  God  of  hosts,  be  with  us  yet, 
Lest  we  forget,  lest  we  forget." 

The  duty  of  contributing  to  the  develop- 
ment of  that  finer  quality  of  national  soul  is 
immediate  and  personal.  The  government  of 
this  country  is  not  at  Washington — it  has 


182  SOCIAL  EEBUILDERS 

never  been  at  Washington.  The  government 
is  here.  It  is  here  and  there  and  yonder 
wherever  the  people  are.  The  court  of  last 
appeal  in  this  land  is  what  the  people  think 
and  feel  and  that  upon  which  they  are  highly 
resolved.  And  to  the  development  and  main- 
tenance of  that  public  sentiment,  that  quality 
of  national  soul,  every  man  and  woman 
among  us  is  constantly  giving  either  of  his 
best  or  some  poor  weak  substitute  which  rep- 
resents that  which  is  second  or  third  rate. 
And  upon  the  quality  of  that  common  soul  the 
issue  of  these  great  days  will  turn. 

I  have  the  feeling  that  the  young  people 
who  have  been  privileged  to  live  through  the 
last  six  years,  witnessing  one  of  the  great 
epochs  in  human  history,  will  have  a  much 
more  vivid  sense  of  the  content  and  meaning 
of  this  period  and  of  its  bearing  upon  the 
future  of  the  race  than  they  have  of  some  of 
the  significant  periods  of  history  in  the  past. 
I  was  told  recently  of  a  certain  high  school— 
I  do  not  remember  just  where  it  was ;  it  was 
not  in  Indiana  and  I  hope  it  was  not  in  Con- 
necticut— where  an  examination  was  being 
held  in  history.  The  teacher  placed  certain 
questions  on  the  blackboard  and  among  the 
rest  was  this  query:  "Write  what  you  know 
about  Magna  Charta." 


SOCIAL  REBUILDERS  183 

When  the  papers  were  handed  in  it  was 
found  that  one  young  lady  in  the  second  year 
of  high  school  had  produced  the  following: 
' '  Magna  Charta  was  a  soldier  in  the  Revolu- 
tionary War.  He  was  shot  in  a  battle  and  his 
wife  at  once  went  to  the  front  to  take  care 
of  him.  But  when  she  found  that  he  was 
dead,  Mrs.  Charta  took  up  his  gun  and  said, 
'Shoot  if  you  must  this  old  gray  head,  but 
I  will  fight  it  out  on  this  line  if  it  takes  all 
summer.'  " 

The  young  lady  had  a  number  of  historical 
references  in  her  production,  but,  as  we  say 
in  baseball,  she  did  not  get  her  hits  very  well 
"bunched."  The  young  people  of  this  gen- 
eration will  have  a  much  more  real  and  accu- 
rate sense  of  the  meaning  of  these  recent 
events  during  the  Great  War  and  of  their 
bearing  upon  the  further  unfolding  of  our 
civilization. 

It  is  a  great  time  to  be  alive.  And  to  be 
alive  and  young  is  heaven  itself.  For  a  thou- 
sand years  other  men  and  women  will  turn 
back  and  study  with  profound  interest  the 
significant  history  of  the  last  six  years  and 
the  still  more  significant  history  of  those  six 
years  which  are  just  ahead.  They  will  realize 
more  fully  than  do  we  the  bearing  of  all  that 
upon  the  whole  future  welfare  of  our  race. 


184  SOCIAL  KEBUILDEES 

"For  our  own  age  this  much  can  be  said. 
The  stake  was  never  so  great  nor  so  widely 
realized.  To  shake  ourselves  free  forever 
from  the  tyranny  of  war  or  to  be  condemned 
to  the  prospects  of  conflicts  growing  steadily 
more  savage  and  destructive  till  civilization 
becomes  its  own  murderer;  to  lift  industrial 
life  into  a  genuine  cooperation  between  direc- 
tion and  labor,  capital  and  brain  and  muscle, 
or  to  watch  the  world  of  industry  desolated 
by  struggles  fiercer  than  in  the  fiercest  days 
of  the  past ;  to  rid  the  world  of  ancient  forms 
of  poverty  and  disease  and  behold  joy  in 
widest  commonalty  spread,  or  to  acquiesce 
in  still  more  glaring  contrasts  of  wealth  and 
poverty  than  we  knew  when  the  arts  of  ex- 
ploitation were  still  comparatively  young— 
these  are  the  issues  that  face  us  to-day. 
Nothing  seems  too  good  to  be  hoped  for; 
nothing  too  evil  to  be  feared." 

It  was  the  distinguished  author  of  "The 
American  Commonwealth,"  James  Bryce, 
who  wrote  these  words  in  a  letter  to  a  friend 
less  than  a  year  ago :  "In  my  judgment  there 
has  never  been  a  time  at  which  the  systematic 
and  impartial  study  of  social  and  economic 
questions  has  been  so  urgent  as  at  the  present 
day.  We  stand  on  the  threshold  of  a  new 
age.  The  problems  which  confront  us  and 


SOCIAL  EEBUILDEES  185 

the  other  leading  democratic  states  of  the 
world  are  of  the  most  complex  and  the  most 
vital  character  and  can  only  be  solved  by 
patient  examination  conducted  in  the  spirit 
of  scientific  detachment  accompanied  by  a 
wide  diffusion  of  adult  civilization.  To  avert 
the  grave  conflict  between  classes  and  inter- 
ests we  must  in  good  time  inquire  into  and 
determine  so  far  as  possible  their  courses  and 
conditions.  "We  need,  therefore,  to-day  and  at 
once  a  much  more  adequate  provision  for 
social  research  and  for  giving  publicity  to  the 
result  of  such  research.  But  to  be  most  fruit- 
ful our  work  must  be  conceived  in  a  large 
and  liberal  spirit." 

How  much  it  would  mean  for  the  develop- 
ment of  this  finer  quality  of  national  soul  if, 
as  Dr.  William  P.  Merrill,  of  the  Brick 
Church,  New  York,  has  pointed  out,  that 
fifteenth  psalm,  revered  alike  by  Catholic, 
Protestant,  and  Hebrew,  could  be  chanted  in 
the  terms  of  national  and  international  life! 
In  that  event  the  ancient  scripture  would 
read  like  this : 

''Lord,  what  nation  shall  stand  in  thy  pres- 
ence or  dwell  in  thy  holy  hill?  The  nation 
that  walketh  uprightly,  that  setteth  justice 
first  and  speaketh  the  truth  in  its  heart.  The 
nation  that  slandereth  not  its  neighbors,  nor 


186  SOCIAL  KEBUILDEES 

setteth  spies  upon  another  nation,  nor  cherish- 
eth  a  grudge  toward  any  people.  The  nation 
that  sweareth  to  its  own  hurt  and  changeth 
not,  in  whose  eyes  a  reprobate  nation  is  de- 
spised. The  nation  that  useth  not  its  strength 
to  oppress  the  weak  or  to  destroy  the  help- 
less. The  nation  that  doeth  these  things  shall 
never  be  moved. ' '  If  these  noble  sentiments 
might  be  embedded  in  the  spirit  of  the  na- 
tion's life,  it  would  mean  a  quality  of  soul  in 
which  all  the  nations  of  the  world  would  be 
blessed. 

When  I  reflect  upon  the  task  of  creating 
this  spirit  and  temper  among  our  people,  I 
think  instantly  of  the  work  of  the  teachers 
in  our  public  schools.  We  saw  at  the  begin- 
ning of  this  lecture  that  Nehemiah  did  not 
bring  money  nor  material  to  the  task  of  social 
rebuilding — no  more  do  they,  for  the  public 
has  paid  them  so  meagerly  that  they  have 
little  money  to  bring.  It  has  been  a  reproach 
to  the  nation  that  these  public  servants  in  the 
only  institution  we  have  which  speaks  to  all 
classes,  all  races,  and  all  creeds  alike  should 
have  been  so  sadly  underpaid. 

But,  like  the  prophet  of  old,  these  public- 
school  teachers  bring  to  the  work  of  rebuild- 
ing impulse,  inspiration,  and  leadership. 
They  are  not  merely  engaged  in  the  work  of 


SOCIAL  REBUILDERS  187 

imparting  information.  They  are  not  merely 
teaching  boys  and  girls  to  read,  write,  and 
add  up  columns  of  figures.  They  are  doing 
something  vastly  more  significant  than  merely 
increasing  the  measure  of  technical  skill  in 
each  pupil.  They  are  at  work  upon  the  task 
of  maturing,  enriching,  and  ennobling  human 
personality  at  its  most  plastic  period  for  a 
better  America.  They  are  steadily  saying  to 
the  generation  whose  day  of  opportunity  is 
just  dawning,  "Let  us  rise  and  build  the  bet- 
ter world  that  is  to  be." 

The  call  of  the  hour  is  for  trained,  compe- 
tent consecrated  leaders  to  stamp  that  period 
of  history  which  lies  in  the  immediate  future 
more  clearly  and  more  firmly  with  the  like- 
ness and  image  of  the  Son  of  God.  We  want 
men  and  women  who  know  something  of  his- 
tory so  that  all  the  foolish  experiments  which 
have  been  tried  in  the  past  and  have  failed 
will  not  have  to  be  tried  over  again.  We  want 
men  who  know  something  of  those  sound 
economic  principles  which  must  underlie  all 
human  well-being  and  advance.  We  want  men 
who  know  something  of  the  psychology  of  the 
human  mind,  that  they  may  be  able  to  antici- 
pate and  rightly  to  appraise  those  thought 
movements  which  are  destined  to  become 
controlling.  We  want  men  with  the  scientific 


188  SOCIAL  EEBUILDEKS 

habit  of  mind  so  that  they  will  be  able  to 
"draw  the  thing  as  they  see  it  for  the  God 
of  things  as  they  are."  And  then  coupled 
with  all  that  skill  in  the  use  of  the  materials 
of  human  well-being,  we  want  men  and  women 
of  vision  and  high  purpose  who  will  work 
steadily  for  human  betterment  with  their 
eyes  and  their  minds  upon  that  social  order 
which  hath  foundations,  whose  builder  and 
maker  is  God. 


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